Kevin's Watch

Cail,

Um, should I say it again? There's a difference between being biologically "human" and being a "person." Hence my point.

When anyone points out inconsistencies in your rebuttal, you fail to address them, and say the same thing over and over again.

See, and that's where all the qualifiers do nothing but "obfuscate" the issue.

Think about it for a minute. Can a "person" biologically be anything other than "human"?
No! Therefore "human" and "poerson" is the same thing.

Is a human zygote/fetus "human"? Yes! Therefore it is also "person."


And the definition of murder?

mur·der ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mûrdr)
n.
The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.

v. mur·dered, mur·der·ing, mur·ders
v. tr.
To kill (another human) unlawfully.
To kill brutally or inhumanly.

(That's American Heritage. Merriam-Webster sustitutes "person" for "human.")--again....they are the same thing.

So it's really quite simple. A zygote/fetus is "human" or "person", whichever term you prefer, therefore aborting said zygote/fetus is by definition murder.

So basically, we have "legalized murder."

All these "not alive until" "not human until" "not a person until" is just (as I and others stated early on) a way to try to dehumanize the act as a justification.

You want to choose abortion? Go ahead, you have a right to choose. But at least stop tryingto justify it by calling it anything other than what it is: murder.

ur-bane,

Nope. I cannot accept that human and person are the same thing. To me, a person is more of a moral state than a biological state, something which a fetus has not yet attained. Potentially, it can. Plus, IMO, it isn't murder if it's not an independent person. It is the destruction of a potential life.

ur-bane wrote:So basically, we have "legalized murder."

A contradiction, since the definition clearly specifies murder as unlawful killing. If it's legal, it isn't murder, so legal murder is impossible.

Show me one of these inconsistencies LM, and I'll explain it. Life is life.

Cail,

Well, I did address all of your points a few posts upthread.

The fetus is alive. It is human. But it is not biologically or morally independent. Therefore, this gives the mother the moral ability to determine whether or not she wants to go through with the pregnancy, and attempt to give birth. That's my pro-Choice stance.

Regardless, you're going to disagree. And I'll disagree with your disagreements. Pro-Lifers and pro-Choicers will never convince each other.

Murrin wrote:

ur-bane wrote:So basically, we have "legalized murder."

A contradiction, since the definition clearly specifies murder as unlawful killing. If it's legal, it isn't murder, so legal murder is impossible.

Point. So let's change "murder" to "deliberate killing."
Now I ask you, is "deliberate killing" OK in your book? And let's not say "Well, for a soldier at war......" because no zygote/fetus/baby will ever be at war.

Lord Mhoram wrote:The fetus is alive. It is human. But it is not biologically or morally independent. Therefore, this gives the mother the moral ability to determine whether or not she wants to go through with the pregnancy, and attempt to give birth. That's my pro-Choice stance.

Morally independent? Where'd that come from?

All I meant was that it hasn't attained personhood yet.

Admittedly, "moral independence" was a poor choice of words on my part.

I still just can't see how you can draw the line between human and person with the umbillical cord being cut.

Cail,

That's really not what I'm saying. But I digress. For now, I really have nothing more to say on this issue. All we're doing is quibbling.

Look, LM. I also feel people should have the right to choose. But I disagree with your reasons. In my eyes, any attempt at dehumanizing or demoralizing abortion is an attempt to remove the possibility of guilt, a conscious detachment from the act. "It wasn't a person anyway."
Life is life, regardless of its developmental state.

I would prefer that people did not have abortions.
I would prefer that people were responsible enough that they never had to make that choice.
I could never wholeheartedly choose abortion myself, but I cannot bring myself to judge others because of the way they feel about it.

Therefore, I fit the label of "pro-choice" for others.

ur-bane,

I would prefer that people did not have abortions.
I would prefer that people were responsible enough that they never had to make that choice.
I could never wholeheartedly choose abortion myself, but I cannot bring myself to judge others because of the way they feel about it.

I agree with you! But this statement doesn't fit in with the rest of your post:

Therefore, I fit the label of "pro-choice" for others.

You are, from what you said above, for the right to choose. Therefore, you're pro-Choice. Simple enough. So am I, I just feel it can be morally justified. If it isn't morally justifiable I cannot in good conscience be pro-Choice.

And therein lies the difference.

Morally Justifiable

I am "pro choice" partly because I have seen circumstances in which it would have been better [for the mother, father, and child] had the child not been brought into the world. In some of those circumstances, it would have been morally justifiable for me to kill the parents. So "morally justifiable" doesn't cut it for me. Plus, I have this "thing" about the morality of something that needs to be justified in the first place.

I cannot go further into that because it gets way too personal.

Let's just say that I have seen both sides of the coin, and I don't have it in me to tell somebody what to do in that situation. So we'll assign labels if we must.

Even though there's already been too much semantic hair splitting going on around here for my taste, I have to address something.

Now I ask you, is "deliberate killing" OK in your book? And let's not say "Well, for a soldier at war......" because no zygote/fetus/baby will ever be at war.

War can be defined as a conflict between two parties or a concerted effort to put an end to something considered injurious. Obviously, this can be used to describe abortion, even if the war is one-sided. But not so obviously, wars are often fought over the use of resources. A woman's body will quite literally war against a fetus if the woman has limited resources (food, water, energy reserves). The fetus will die of malnutrition and much of it will be reabsorbed by the woman's body.

So what we're talking about is a war over intangible resources. Time, opportunity, quality of life, mobility, etc. Now, when the fetus' desire to be born is in concordance with the mother's desire to have a child (or if the mother can reach a comprimise), there is no war. But when they're in conflict... We are currently in a society that gives the conditions of victory to the mother. But if abortion is made illegal, we reverse it.

Personally, I'm completely against the idea of abortion. It's siding with the strong over the weak (other than that, I consider their claims equal). But the idea of puting the decision into anybody else's hands, especially without a strong support network for both the mother and child... it speaks to me of a greater arrogance and oppression.

Poverty and crime levels will increase (you can track a steady, uncanny decrease in States from the date abortion was legalized in each State. Correlation does not equal causality, I know.), miscarriage rates will go up dramatically (I know one girl who did sit-ups several times a day until she miscarried because she couldn't afford an abortion), more babies will be found in trash cans, etc.

And as I've asked before, when a woman miscarries, will we start an inquiry every time it's reported? Did she really "accidentally" fall down the stairs? Was she being negligent by not getting regular pre-natal check-ups? Health Care costs will go up, just for the fact that they'll have to prove the medical assistance wasn't in fact an abortion. Forget the fact that it would be infeasible, can you imagine the stress that would put on the innocent?

No, besides finding the legislation of a woman's body being morally repugnant, I find it to be impossible to accomplish in any meaningful sense. Not with the cat already being out of the bag.

I know this is a forum for the religious and the philosophical, but we're never going to get anywhere talking about definitions of consciousness, sentience, etc. Not in this framework. The only way to define it is, as Mhoram pointed out, the point at which the fetus leaves the body. It is a line of demarcation, no more real than time zones, but we have to agree to draw the line somewhere.

That was the point of my whole thought experiment, by the way (not that many people participated, but hey). For most of us, we wouldn't consider contraception to be murder, even though it is the intentional prevention of a human being coming into existence. If we could see time differently... On a long enough timeline, a person who chooses to never have children is a mass murderer.

We can't mandate procreation; we can't regulate its results. Not with the limited way we see things. There's a better way, sure, but I think it requires the participation of society rather than the rigid control of the individual.

Excellent post, Syl. I particularly found the socio-economic ramifications of making abortion illegal to be interesting.

Avatar wrote:Well, as the simplest example I can come up with off the cuff, (and never mind the likelihood, it's the principle I'm thinking about here) how about if an attacker were to offer the choice of releasing the mother in exchange for the child's life? Should the child be killed in that situation to preserve the mother?

If the answer is no, then the rights of the child after its birth are more important than the rights of the foetus before, seeing as it is permissable to kill the foetus to protect the mothers life.

OK, I think I understand the principle you have in mind. And the answer is No. It is never acceptable to sacrifice a child for a parent if only one or the other can be saved. The child should always be saved. A parent is supposed to do whatever it takes to keep the child alive. That's a responsibility we took on when we decided to have the child. If you have to cut my chest open with a spoon and take my heart out so it can replace my child's defective one, that's what you do. The child should never be sacrificed.

This includes the abortion-for-the-mother's-safety issue. If there is no way to save both the woman and the fetus, but you can choose which will be saved, you choose the fetus.


As for your scenario, here's what I think. There is no reason to think the person offering this choice would not just kill the child after the mother is dead. This person doesn't exactly have a lot of credibility, eh? My reply would be, "Since I expect my child to be killed either way, I offer you a choice: Let my child go, and I'll let you live. Kill him/her, and your death will take many painful days. But there is sure as hell no way you're going to walk out of here over my child's corpse."

LM Wrote:

Well, it is a part of her body,

How is it part of her body? When was the last time you took a human anatomy course?

When a woman gets pregnant, her body starts to develop the placenta which is basically the life support system for the baby. She is not born with the placenta, it just develops as the baby develops. One of the reasons that a woman feels so badly the first trimester is because the placenta is not fully developed. It takes about three months to be fully up and running.

Again, how is a baby biologically the mother's body? She was not born with two hearts, two brains, etc.

I don't mean to attack you, LM but I just don't understand your logic.

caam,

Is the fetus attached physically to the mother in any way?

Syl wrote:I know this is a forum for the religious and the philosophical, but we're never going to get anywhere talking about definitions of consciousness, sentience, etc. Not in this framework. The only way to define it is, as Mhoram pointed out, the point at which the fetus leaves the body. It is a line of demarcation, no more real than time zones, but we have to agree to draw the line somewhere.

I do not have to agree to draw a line anywhere. I say a human being's journey begins at conception, and this person should be considered the unique being s/he is from that point on.

Syl wrote:That was the point of my whole thought experiment, by the way (not that many people participated, but hey). For most of us, we wouldn't consider contraception to be murder, even though it is the intentional prevention of a human being coming into existence. If we could see time differently... On a long enough timeline, a person who chooses to never have children is a mass murderer.

Bah! There is no unique DNA involved in what you're talking about. Sperm and unfertilized eggs will never develop to the point where any of us would consider them to be human beings, or people, or whatever. I won't bother debating the moral shortcomings of guys who have wet dreams.

Syl wrote:We can't mandate procreation; we can't regulate its results. Not with the limited way we see things. There's a better way, sure, but I think it requires the participation of society rather than the rigid control of the individual.

Now THAT I agree with! The whole "it takes a village to raise a child" idea. When girls are brought up believing that they are glorious beings, that they can wait until they know it is what they want; when boys are brought up believing that they are not less than any other boy if they have not had sex by age X; when all know that, even if they DO mess up and there's a pregnancy, they will NOT be abandoned, disowned, or beaten (even if they do have to listen to a bit of yelling ) - THEN we'll be done with these debates. And, in nearly all cases, it takes more than just the parents to accomplish all this.