Alabama votes no more abortion!

[Annie]

Unfortunately that does not work. Substituting one undefined word for another does not help.

Well, I don’t know why you are asking me about the definition, because I don’t use the word when discussing abortion. If you want to use it, then define it and explain why it is a good addition to the discussion.

I do not use it because it has a number of definitions, some of which are completely made up for legal purposes.

because the potential is not the same as the actual ”

So… we get that the potential is not the actual. What we don’t get is why you don’t get is that with the combining of the ovum and the sperm, a new organism, ie, “an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form,” begins, and thus this is the moment when the potentiality of the sperm and ovum become the actuality of a new human being (referring here to human life).

The newly-formed human being still has a lot of potential, but at the moment it begins to exist, it is no longer a potential human being, it is a human being.

It is rather ironic that you chose St Thomas Aquinas to provide some sort of evidence for whatever point you are trying to make. The Church has always prohibited procured abortion, and thus St Thomas would probably be shocked at the misuse of his work in this way.

His work was also based on the science of that time. They didn’t have ultrasounds back then, s he never saw a “pre-quickening” human moving in his mother’s womb, sights the like of which converted De Bernard Nathanson from an abortionist and co-founder of NARAL to pro-life and eventual Catholic.

Because a seed is NOT a plant, even though it contains the information to become a plant. Because the fertilized egg is NOT a chicken, even though it contains the information to become a chicken, because a libretto is not an opera, even though it contains the information to become an opera, because the zygote is not a human being, even though it contains the information to become a human being.

Human beings are neither plants nor chickens nor librettos. There is no moral problem with destroying any of these things in any of their forms, so it does not matter that we linguistically differentiate them by their stages of development.

The only time this makes a difference is when we are talking about humanity, because there is a moral issue about destroying a member of humanity.

But all the rest is simply semantics. We could just as easily call oak seeds baby oaks, or infants fetuses, or a fawn a deer. We could classify paintings in their various stages and give each stages a different name. We could refuse to classify humans by developmental names and refer only to their ages. We could identify their age by the first day of the year in which they were born, or we could start counting a child’s age on their first or fifth birthday or we could record their age by month or not pay any attention to their age and measure them only by height.

 

[Annie]

Of course this is only the first step. Once you internalized this information, it will be possible to continue.

I have children. What I “internalize” is that a baby is complete in and of itself, and the baby simply unfolds as it grows older. There is no possible way to see any other starting point for this process than conception.

And I refuse to take a first step in order to “internalize” a set of thoughts which so very drastically go against God’s laws. Mindlessly “internalizing” thoughts is like allowing oneself to be brainwashed. I will not internalize some other person’s thoughts. What a horrid concept.

 

[Cathoholic]

Economist . . .

Certainly true. It is an intruder, and the woman’s body fights against it.

I never thought of an innocent human being as an “intruder”.

Do you think the “abortionist” is an “intruder”?
(I think abortionists are intruders, but what do YOU think?)

 

[claudine]

@ Economist:

But arguing these points is circular and useless.
A human egg and sperm joined together in its mother’s womb is human, not a frog or a tumor and cannot become anything else if left to grow and continue being nourished and protected.

TBH even a 30 year old fit human male will die if he is removed from sufficient oxegen, nourishment and water and he can’t or is prevented from getting them.

Take the newborn, it is as vulnerable as it was months before birth. In other words it would die without being cared for by feeding, providing liquid, enough oxegen and shelter,even though it is separated physically after birth from its mother’s body.

So why do you try to draw lines where none exist?

 

[sallybutler]

A human egg and sperm joined together in its mother’s womb is human

I thought the Church teaching did not include the caveat “in the mother’s womb”. Which is why fertilized eggs held in fertility clinics present the same issue as do contraceptives that prevent implantation of the fertilized egg in the womb.

 

[sallybutler]

I also don’t understand why this law doesn’t include a punishment for the woman. She is the one who wanted the child killed.

The Church excommunicates her because it is also her sin. Shouldn’t the law take the same approach?

 

[dvdjs]

I thought the Church teaching did not include the caveat “in the mother’s womb”. Which is why fertilized eggs held in fertility clinics present the same issue as do contraceptives that prevent implantation of the fertilized egg in the womb.

This.

In the name of protecting “life,” anti-abortion legislators could functionally outlaw fertility treatments that involve fertilizing eggs and selecting the strongest embryos for implantation. But don’t worry, said Alabama State Senator Clyde Chambliss: “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.” In other words, it’s not about the life of a fertilized egg at all. It’s about controlling women.

Alabama’s Abortion Bill Is Immoral, Inhumane, and Wildly Inconsistent

The measure passed by Alabama’s Senate on Tuesday is just one more link on a world-spanning chain of misogyny that punishes all women and girls.

www.vanityfair.com

I also don’t understand why this law doesn’t include a punishment for the woman. She is the one who wanted the child killed.

From reading the law, it is not entirely clear that it doesn’t. If a woman procures an abortion for herself form another provider, she cannot be prosecuted. But if she self-administers one she cannot be prosecuted ro procuring the service, but maybe liable for providing it.

 

[midori]

I also don’t understand why this law doesn’t include a punishment for the woman.

Ultimately, that’s a question for legislators-- if the crime is x, the punishment is y.

Right now, we have about 45 years’ worth of hearts to correct and misinformation to counter.

Rather than focusing on an “ideal” law, the important thing is more to regain lost ground.

I think the Irish are pretty much the only country in the world that actually voted to allow abortion on demand. For most of the others, it’s been imposed on them through the court system, or by legislators, or whatever.

So the important thing is to close the door, and make sure people understand why the door is closed, and why it needs to stay closed. Then after everyone understands the importance of the existence of the closed door, we can worry about the details of the door— like what color it’s painted.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Sources

• Original Site
• Apple Podcast
• AUDIO (Google Play)

Alabama has adopted a law that would criminalize nearly all abortions and make the penalty for providing one up to 99 years in prison. The man who wrote the law knew it was unconstitutional — and did it anyway. We asked him why.

Guests: Eric Johnston, a lawyer in Alabama who has spent more than 30 years trying to ban abortion, and Sabrina Tavernise, a national correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background reading: States across the country are passing some of the most restrictive abortion legislation in decades, setting up court battles that could profoundly reshape abortion access in America.On Wednesday, Alabama’s governor signed into law a measure to ban most abortions in the state. Here’s what’s likely to happen next.Among residents of Alabama, opposition to abortion is widespread.

 

[Annie]

No matter what happens with our laws, there will be people who seek to do evil.

They will travel to other states, they will travel to other countries, they will find people willing to commit the assassination for them illegally, they will find “home remedies.”

Do we say this about other types of laws, laws against murder, rape, torture? No. So why do we say it about abortion? It just seems like an argument from the other side to get us to give up.

 

[JimG]

The title of the article is “Roe v Wade—America’s Holocaust.” But what is interesting is the prediction that the U.S. is on a course of division similar to the Civil War, where States were divided into slave states and free states, with a constitutional convention waiting to be called.

Roe v. Wade — America’s Holocaust – Complete Christianity

 

[Annie]

The AL law does not include prosecution for women who seek or obtain abortions, only those who provide them.

 

[Annie]

It has already passed into law.

 

[ProVobis]

But it doesn’t go into effect yet as I understand it.

And does it allow the morning-after pill I’d like to know?

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

A divide and conquer strategy maybe.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

I’m not familiar with the politics there so I can’t really comment.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

I think I posted it earlier in this thread but Alabama’s law is taking a new tact in challenging Roe. It is not playing with the margins of “undue burden” to the woman, as many anti-abortion laws do that target hospital admittance rights, requiring ultrasounds, etc. Instead Alabama has defined an unborn child in the womb as a legal person as is its perogative under the Constitution to expand rights. Other cases involving anti-abortion laws in other states that have explicitly declared the unborn a person have been help up at least in part by the Court, so it is not inconceivable that this law (and similarly Georgia’s) can punch down Roe. We will have to see.

As for your observation on families, that is sadly true in the US as well, and probably most western nations. In the US minorities have the highest rate of unwed motherhood. A staggering 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers and never have a steady father in their lives, and it is devastating to their outcomes across the board. But white people are catching up with I believe 40% of children born to unwed mothers. It’s a crisis no one wants to talk about, all we hear is praise for single motherhood and it is promoted in the wealthy elite circles as desirable for women to have children through artificial insemination so they can fulfill their wish to be mothers and not have to worry about finding a good father and marrying him. And keep career oriented too of course. And things like this also breed things like the surrogacy industry, which also gets little coverage if not praise. Even usual conservative stalwart Ben Shapiro thinks surrogacy is morally neutral. But I believe it is not better than slavery by another name. Buying children, designing them, exploiting the mother who carried the child. It’s disgusting. But now I’ve gone off on a rant. Long story short I agree we are destroying our society with such attitudes towards life.

 

[JimG]

“Regardless of how this goes down, whether by overturning Roe v. Wade in favor of states’ rights, or by adding a Nullification Amendment via an Article V Convention of States, the end result is the same. There will be a division of states, just like there was prior to the Civil War. Back then there were Slave States and Free States. Of course, back then a lot of it had to do with the geography of North and South. This division will be much different, based more on religious affiliation that manifests itself politically between Red States and Blue States in presidential elections. As the lines are drawn states like Alabama and Missouri will become “Life States,” and states like New York will become “Kill States.” “

Source

 

[Economist]

So… we get that the potential is not the actual. What we don’t get is why you don’t get is that with the combining of the ovum and the sperm, a new organism, ie, “an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form,” begins, and thus this is the moment when the potentiality of the sperm and ovum become the actuality of a new human being (referring here to human life).

I agree with everything, except that you equate human life with human being. The expression “human life” is actually a human zygote, which is a human cell.

The cells of ovum and sperm form a potential zygote. The zygote is an actual human cell (unless there is a substantial mutation. This necessitates the definition of “human cell”, which is not obvious. More about it later.) But, for the time being let’s assume that the zygote is an actual human cell.

The zygote is a potential blastocyst. Or it may split and then we have two or more actual blastocysts. The blastocyst is a potential embryo, if it gets embedded into the uterus.

The actual embryo is a potential fetus, barring some unforeseeable circumstance.

The actual fetus may or may not survive (miscarriages do happen) and if t does, it may or may not be born (stillbirths also happen) and then we have an actual human infant. That is a new human being. Not just biologically, but philosophically and legally, too.

As you see there are several steps during the development, each step involving a potential-to-actual change, and in each step we give a new name to the entity, because there is significant quantitative difference.

To equate the zygote (first step) with a full-blown, freshly born human (last step) being only serves one purpose: obfuscate the matter.

We need to take a step back and investigate the concept of human cell. The biological definition of a human DNA is far from being precise. It is not an exact sequence of molecules, rather something: “sort of…”. The whole biological definition of a “species” is simply descriptive, it only asserts that two beings belong to the same species, if they can produce a new offspring. That is woefully inadequate for serious analysis. If a few parents happen to deliver actual babies, who all have some genetic mutation, which allows them to interbreed among themselves, but unable to produce a new offspring with the “normal” humans, then we have a brand new species. What then?

 

[Economist]

So the biological definition of “human” is useless for philosophical discussion. Fortunately there there is a philosophical definition: “a human is a rational animal”. If possible, this definition is even worse than the other one. Rationality, or intelligence is not a “binary” variable, which is either present or not. A newborn has the potential to be rational, or intelligent, but it is not actually rational yet. A non-human animal may undergo some mutation, which elevates its rationality to be be on par - or even superior to humans.

A chimpanzee or a bonobo has a very rudimentary level of rationality or intelligence, about on the same level as four year old human child. What about those animals? To say that only a certain level of intelligence “counts” bring its own problems.

The newly-formed human being still has a lot of potential, but at the moment it begins to exist, it is no longer a potential human being, it is a human being.

A newly BORN human is biologically independent human being. The act of being born separates the fetus from the infant. The infant is not biologically dependent upon the mother’s bodily resources, it can survive if anyone else produces the necessary nutrition an care.

It is rather ironic that you chose St Thomas Aquinas to provide some sort of evidence for whatever point you are trying to make.

It really should not be. Aquinas made some very good points, the difference between potential and actual being one of them.

Human beings are neither plants nor chickens nor librettos. There is no moral problem with destroying any of these things in any of their forms, so it does not matter that we linguistically differentiate them by their stages of development.

The point was the philosophical concept of actual and potential, help to understand the importance and the significance of these ideas.

The only time this makes a difference is when we are talking about humanity, because there is a moral issue about destroying a member of humanity.

That is merely an opinion.