Points on abortion and the crutch of supporters

Okay. Courtesy of Crashfrog’s message #200 in this thread, here is a fetus, which is developing entirely inside its mother’s body:Here is a baby:I assert that there is a great degree of difference between these two stages of a human life cycle. This adds complexity to the abortion issue that cannot be ignored. We are not dealing with a separate being when a fertilized egg is inside its mother, and the woman needs to be considered as a factor in the debate.regards,
Esteban Hambre

What's evil about defending your body from a malicious invader? Sure it does. Absolutely it does. Since that's the only way to remove the invader. I have no particular moral objection to the death penalty. I don't support it, however, because I don't believe that it is politically advantageous, in the international community, to execute people.

Not that I disagree with your point, but as indicated by the URL of the photo source - http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/zygote.jpg, photo one is not that of a fetus.Moose

Good point. Well, then, here's a two-month-old fetus, courtesy of the Westside Pregnancy Resource Center:The illusion is that this developing fetus is not only huge, but it is floating in the aethyr somewhere. In actual fact we're looking at a picture taken inside a woman's uterus.Here is a picture of a human baby:Note that this baby is a separate physical entity from its mother. I assert that this difference is what makes all arguments concerning "murder of the unborn" by definition misleading and fallacious. This is and has always been my point: that anti-choice rhetoric ignores the additional factor which is the mother, inside whose body this process is taking place. Without this context, the debate is hopelessly unrealistic, inexcusably sanctimonious, and emotionally manipulative.regards,
Esteban Hambre

One is an absolute guideline for legal death to be declared. The other is a guideline for cases where the conditions for legal death are not met, but there is very little chance of recovery, such as loss of all upper brain activity leaving a living shell that only survives because it is given life support. Or people will be fed up with the strident nonsense and move on to other more pressing issues, like how to get out of Iraq after 20 years of war ... Of course this will also be in a perfect world where research continues on fetal stem cells to counter real health problems in real living persons.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Sorry to keep pressing you on this... Unfortunately that still reads exactly like what I said. You are using the above to draw parallels to the nature (charactereistics) of fetal life and so abortions, right?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

It is part of the ethical debate.Do I think that abortion should be across the board on demand? No. Because at some point the question has to be raised, "why now, why not earlier?" -- especially as we get to later term abortions.Do I think that it should be used as a "final answer" form of birth control? Yes, BUT ONLY until the conditions for legal death no longer apply: there should be no question about the legality of the "morning after" pill being freely available over the counter (and if anyone thinks this would become the control method of choice has not been paying attention: I think one experience with it will make uncautious women much more cautious). I also think it is totally the woman's choice at this point. After that point has been passed there has been a decision, conscious or not, to go beyond that (legal life\death} point, and other ethical questions are raised.Do I think there are other justifications for abortion? Yes, certainly to save the life of the mother (right up to the moment of birth) but also: where the condition of the fetus indicates a medical problem, then it becomes an ethical question for the family on whether or not they want to continue life support. Families normally do not "pull the plug" on comatose patients that are otherwise healthy and mentally complete. Also, where late term abortions are considered, it might be more appropriate to do a C-section than the crush and extract methods.Using the logic of the requirements for legal death first, and then on the family judgment on absence of personhood at one end, should be equally applicable on the other end.There is a third marker that could be discussed, but as noted before, it leads towards touchy situations for the severely mentally handicapped, and that is the question of human-like - but for me this is between the legal life and personhood question. When does the fetal development of a human differentiate it from the fetal development of a chimpanzee? (I used to have a site with a picture of a chimpanzee fetus similar to the ones the anti-choice crowds use and looking at it you would not know the difference). BUT - I don’t think argument in this area is fruitful as the provisions above are more inclusive and direct in dealing with the issues.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I feel like somewhere we are talking past each other. I agree with the above statement. But this one I think is made too strong. I was arguing that a gestational life never really meets the conditions for legal death. About the only time this would be true is before implantation.Once implanted however, it is in an active procedure that removes those similarities... which is why I analogized to purposely ending an ongoing operation. Thus it is SIMILAR to death, but does not actually meet the conditions of death.Maybe my problem would be handled by changing your argument to saying, while not actually dead, given our way of defining death, gestational beings do not fully qualify as "living" either. At the very least not living as a "person" lives.Cellular life, gestational life, but not personal life.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

the living dead?good point. I will incorporate that in my formal essay on this.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

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Nice ad hominem. No, I actually am pointing out that the definition of life is based on religious and/or philosophical beliefs regarding human life.

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Earlier in this thread you were saying otherwise.

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Then you have just refuted your own argument. I mean you are not "Pro-cells eventually will become a living thing", right? You are proLife.

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It would be absurd to say... and I note that you completely avoided the stronger part of my argument... that a fully grown woman's right to life gets voided as a privilege, in order to actualize the right of cells to eventually become a living thing?

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Remember YOU already said that life is a right, in order to defend your position. If they are just cells that may one day be life, then they don't have a right to life, as they are not alive.

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I am "pro-cells eventually becoming a living thing". Unfortunately in this c.r.e.a.m. corrupted capitalist society your only choices are pro-life or pro-choice.What did I avoid?A fully grown woman's right to life doesn't get voided because she isn't going to die is she? As I said before if pregnancies are life threatening,rape,incest she should be able to get an abortion.That is exactly what they do have, a right to life.

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Ethics do not require religion, that is why I repeatedly used the word philosophy as well. However, any single person's ethics can have their foundation in a religion.

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Yes,

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In the single statement you took out of context in order to make it look like I was saying what you wanted me to say, I only used religion because I was referring to proLifers like you who generally base their ethics regarding reproduction on their religious beliefs.

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I do not base my ethics of reproduction from my religious beliefs. I base it on freedom, in that giving everything a chance to life, especially if you're responsible for creating it.

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But this all said... if ethics required religion how would that have refuted my beliefs regarding abortion?

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It wouldn't have refuted your beliefs regarding abortion, I was speaking of your belief that ethics do not require religion.

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-porcelain

yes

I never told any woman to do anything with their body. That is the point. Everyone must decide for themselves what's right and wrong.This message has been edited by CHRIS PORTEUS jr, 09-11-2004 01:47 PM

A year or so ago I wrote a paper in Biomedical Ethics regarding which criteria should be used for death. One problem with my criteria, if trying to apply it to the abortion debate, is that it argues that death means 'the cessation of x,' rather than 'lack of x.' I think the latter can be substituted for the former, though, with minimal repercussions. Here's my paper (short) for those interested.By what standard should a human be considered dead?In the past, the way to tell whether a person was dead was to check if their heart was beating and to see if their lungs were breathing. Due to the advent of modern technology this standard for determination falls short of our common sense notion of whether a person is dead or not. A human nowadays can be kept breathing with an iron lung, have normal heart functioning, yet have absolute brain damage to their cerebrum, i.e. they are in a vegetative state and will never be conscious again. Is this human alive by the sense that we commonly use the word, and should they have the same right to life as every other living human?I agree very much with Martin Benjamin on this issue. When we talk about death, we are referring to cessation of a certain kind, e.g. death of disco music, death of tree, death of a dog, etc. In all of these situations, some kind ceases to be that kind and hence it is dead. Now there are two kinds that have been put forward to account for what we mean when we say, someone has died. The first is the organism, and the second is the person. Note that death can be applied to both these kinds, and neither of the applications are inherently wrong; it is just that one of these doesn’t correspond to our common sense notion of death. The organismic view of death describes death as ‘the ceasing to exist of a functioning organism, i.e. when the cardiopulminaryneurological (CPN) processes stop functioning. The person view describes death as ‘the ceasing to exist of person--the conscious, thinking being.Now the problem with the organismic view of death is that a human can lose all ability to think and be conscious yet be considered alive and to have rights of any other human. The absurdity of this can be summed up in two thought scenarios:1.) If someone hurts one of your family members or friends to the extent that they will never be conscious again, would you feel relieved that they still have CPN functioning?2.) If a doctor tells you that you are either going to lose all CPN functioning if you do not treat a disease, or you are going to lose all conscious ability and be a vegetable for the rest of your life if you do get treated, would you feel comforted by being treated since you will still have CPN functioning?It seems that the large majority of people would neither feel relieved or comforted by any of the scenarios. When someone thinks about the tragedy of death, they are not merely thinking about CPN functioning. They are referring to the loss of consciousness, the loss of the ability to plan for the future, to communicate, to laugh, to think, etc. This is what we ultimately mean when we speak of the death of a human—i.e. we refer to the death of a person.I think it must be recognized that just because we have always checked for a heart beat or for respiration to see if a human was dead, what we were ultimately checking was to see if the person was dead, not just the organism. Before modern medicine, loss of CPN always referred to the death of a person. So even though nowadays we may be able to keep CPN functioning without the human being conscious, that does not mean they are ‘alive’ by any common sense standard for which we use the word. Their personhood is dead, and that is the ‘kind’ which really matters to humans.

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Why the change of heart?

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An awakening of the mind.

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Most fertilized eggs, those "babies of the future", never implant and are flushed out of a woman's body during menstruation.

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IUD's prevent implantation of fertilized eggs.

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Do you oppose the use of IUD's?

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Do you advocate searching the menstrual discharge of all women to search for those "babies of the future"?

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No I don't, You've asked me this same question on this thread.Don't be ridiculous.

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COrrection: proponents of [i]safe and legal[/b] abortion [i]rights[/b].

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Not exactly. That's not what the full title of pro-choice entails.

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When does the combination of sperm and egg become a human life, Chris?

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Most likely when it's close to being born.This message has been edited by CHRIS PORTEUS jr, 09-11-2004 01:47 PM

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-porcelain

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. Could you please point out what you feel was my saying that the definition of life is NOT based on personal religious/philosophical beliefs.I think there is a misunderstanding on your part. Why do you feel that the rights of cells should outweigh the rights of a fully grown host organism?And if you really feel this way, are you carefully keeping all of your sperm so that each one will become the life that it can be? I've never heard this before. What does it mean? I see, so in your imagination pregnancies work like this: A women discovers she is pregnant and at the same time whether it will turn out to be life threatening?Perhaps you should read more about pregnancies and how they actually work. When a woman first find out she is pregnant there may be no clues whatsoever that something bad is going to happen. It is a RISK to continue with the pregnancy.It may be a smaller risk if there are no known problems... and you know what great medical analyses poor people can afford... but there are still risks. And they may be life threatening to the child, to the mother, or both.No threats may materialize until the gestation is well along... the gestation CAUSING the new situation to emerge.The best chance for the mother is to stop a pregnancy before a pregnancy is far along. It is also more reasonable to stop a pregnancy that a woman is not wanting before it becomes a known immediate threat to herself.If a woman has a right to life, she has a right not to gamble it. Oh, well then you have no problem with abortion then (which is removing a parasitic cellular life from the host) as long as they allow the tissue to continue outside the body and not simply destroy the cells?Or are you feeling that it has some "other" destiny? That it is the same as a full grown human and should be allowed to become a human?If so, then what other than religion allows you to believe those cells have some "full human" quality? That they should be "given a chance"?And I will repeat my earlier question... so you actually preserve all of your sperm so that they will all have a chance to live? Mmmmm. Yes, you seem to be confused all over the place. Let's just end it with the realization I was not saying ethics is necessarily based on religion.Indeed much of what I discussed here regarding the definition of life isn't even ethics, but metaphysics. And I have a feeling that'll get things even more crazy than they are already.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)