Congressman says abortions never necessary to save life of mother

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seekerz said:
Ah, I was trying to explain why it’s not simply a matter of reattaching an umbilical cord and providing nutrients. The placenta is this complex, wonderful, unique organ whose structure and function would need to be replicated in any such artificial womb; the mother and baby both contribute to its formation. In other words, the woman is not simply a vessel, she is an active participant in every process by which a 2 cells become a baby; some of the very earliest stages have been successfully replicated outside the womb but beyond those all efforts I’m aware of are highly experimental and largely carried out in animals.

Here’s a link. To summarize the article, various methods have been tried with limited success. The outcome: short term extra-uterine survival (measured in weeks), phenomenal expense and, from what I can tell, usable only in premature fetuses (fairly developed but not close enough to term). From what I have read, the idea of an artificial womb for 1-2 inch long embryos would be at least several light years away.

I’m not sure how relevant any of this would be to treatment of ectopic pregnancy from a Catholic standpoint, since present teaching does not allow for the pregnancy to be removed from the tube. How then would it get into an experimental ‘womb’ to see if it could survive?
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It all doesn’t seem very likely all of a sudden.
Well, at least I gave it a shot -right? Oh well. 🤷
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
So are pomegranates 🤷 I don’t consider the failure of an egg to be fertilized to be abortion. It happens to women every month.
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That’s not what I was saying, either. The pill also can cause an already fertilized egg not to implant in the uterus, and that is an abortion.
 
scipio337 said:
See Biden, Joe.
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You mean the guy who presided over the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas talks and who influenced a couple of Democrats in the Senate decision to confirm the Justice? I still have the tapes from those discussions, btw. I feel that without Biden, Thomas would have gone the way of Bork. So poke away at the guy all you want but do recognize his positive achievements, more than most of the so-called “pro-life” Republicans who willingly accept pro-life money and only scream at their opponents.
 
TEPO said:
It all doesn’t seem very likely all of a sudden.
Well, at least I gave it a shot -right? Oh well. 🤷
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You are right in one important thing: it is the will to prioritize life that makes the difference in every type of care. Inspiring that will in people is what makes the most difference to unborn life. Making sweeping statement about who can be saved and how, without the necessary medical information to back that up (as the congressman seems to have done) is counterproductive.

I also believe that personhood initiatives have had the unintended negative consequence of making “life from the stage of conception” seem like an extreme view. In my mind, equating the life which very definitely does exist from the moment of fertilization, to personhood, is not just impractical but unhelpful.
 
seekerz said:
You are right in one important thing: it is the will to prioritize life that makes the difference in every type of care. Inspiring that will in people is what makes the most difference to unborn life. Making sweeping statement about who can be saved and how, without the necessary medical information to back that up (as the congressman seems to have done) is counterproductive.

I also believe that personhood initiatives have had the unintended negative consequence of making “life from the stage of conception” seem like an extreme view. In my mind, equating the life which very definitely does exist from the moment of fertilization, to personhood, is not just impractical but unhelpful.
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Right, this was the thinking about slavery, look at the war and civil rights battle that occurred with this.

And once again, it is mostly the Democrat party on the wrong side of this issue.

As polls say, it can be shown that the majority of Americans are pro-life, whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.

The Democrat Party should stop representing the Culture of Death. People like Obama and Russ Feingold have supported infanticide. Shameful.
 
BroomWagon said:
Right, this was the thinking about slavery, look at the war and civil rights battle that occurred with this.

And once again, it is mostly the Democrat party on the wrong side of this issue.

The Democrat Party should stop representing the Culture of Death.
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I’m not sure how your post is related to mine, but to my mind abortion is one of the MAIN casualties of partisan politics. Party politics alienates and excludes people like myself who support life but are not willing to support obviously/highly unsuitable candidates for leadership. Not to mention the millions who could be persuaded to support life if it wasn’t made a “your party versus mine issue”. So in a nutshell, IMO, party politics is the worst thing to EVER happen to the unborn: it keeps people divided who might otherwise unite to do what politics will likely never do - make a real dent in abortion.
 
seekerz said:
I’m not sure how your post is related to mine, but to my mind abortion is one of the MAIN casualties of partisan politics. Party politics alienates and excludes people like myself who support life but are not willing to support obviously/highly unsuitable candidates for leadership. Not to mention the millions who could be persuaded to support life if it wasn’t made a “your party versus mine issue”. So in a nutshell, IMO, party politics is the worst thing to EVER happen to the unborn: it keeps people divided who might otherwise unite to do what politics will likely never do - make a real dent in abortion.
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I understand that some people are pro-life with conditions on it.
 
BroomWagon said:
I understand that some people are pro-life with conditions on it.
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Understand what you will. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself. I prefer to support the person who will do the job best rather than choose an unsuitable leader hoping that he will somehow magically manifest good leadership specifically to benefit the unborn.
 
seekerz said:
I also believe that personhood initiatives have had the unintended negative consequence of making “life from the stage of conception” seem like an extreme view. In my mind, equating the life which very definitely does exist from the moment of fertilization, to personhood, is not just impractical but unhelpful.
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How do you know it was “unintended” though? I say it’s a made-up word that gets redefined by the pro-choicers whenever anyone tries to argue against it.

The personhood argument is a sham.
 
… It was made-up because according to science, a unique set of human DNA is created that is different than that of both parents since the point of conception on. Knowing this, the argument had to be diverted to the “personhood” argument, which is much less scientific and much more debatable.

Science has essentially been removed from the debate -which makes it more of an argument without boundaries… :cool:
 
TEPO said:
… It was made-up because according to science, a unique set of human DNA is created that is different than that of both parents since the point of conception on. Knowing this, the argument had to be diverted to the “personhood” argument, which is much less scientific and much more debatable.

Science has essentially been removed from the debate -which makes it more of an argument without boundaries… :cool:
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Which also means that almost every pro-choicer has their own definition of exactly when someone becomes a “person”. Literally everyone I’ve debated this with has a different point at which they consider someone a person.
 
Rand_Al_Thor said:
Which also means that almost every pro-choicer has their own definition of exactly when someone becomes a “person”. Literally everyone I’ve debated this with has a different point at which they consider someone a person.
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That’s true -in fact, even philosophers from ancient times to the present cannot agree on what exactly this concept is all about… So why not just drop it…:).

There is no such thing as “personhood”, there is only “humanity”.
 
Rand_Al_Thor said:
Which also means that almost every pro-choicer has their own definition of exactly when someone becomes a “person”. Literally everyone I’ve debated this with has a different point at which they consider someone a person.
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Accepting that life begins at conception does not necessarily mean accepting that full personhood has been attained in a LEGAL sense. I see no moral problem in accepting that personhood for a fetus is necessarily different from personhood in a 35 yr old man, because IT IS. Before viability, the life of a fetus is fully dependent on the mother - no ifs, ands or buts and that most definitely affects the concept of independent legal personhood. For practical reasons, personhood before a child is capable of living outside of the womb, must be defined differently.
 
october_baby said:
One of the reasons I’m not a republican, but a conservative. The average congressman
seems to get it (Atkin,Murdock, and the congressman in Illinois.) But the leadership
doesn’t.( Romney and Ryan.)
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Murdoch, I agree, but what exactly does Akin get?
 
seekerz said:
Accepting that life begins at conception does not necessarily mean accepting that full personhood has been attained in a LEGAL sense. I see no moral problem in accepting that personhood for a fetus is necessarily different from personhood in a 35 yr old man, because IT IS. Before viability, the life of a fetus is fully dependent on the mother - no ifs, ands or buts and that most definitely affects the concept of independent legal personhood. For practical reasons, personhood before a child is capable of living outside of the womb, must be defined differently.
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Can I respond to this or was it just for Rand Al’Thor…?
 
Okay, I’ll just admit that I lack a certain level of self control so I can’t help myself -I’m going for it…

This is where I’m stumped:
seekerz said:
For practical reasons, personhood before a child is capable of living outside of the womb, must be defined differently.
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…Why “must” it be?

…How would humanity be bettering itself by working together to create standards by which the term “personhood” would be defined?

…isn’t it true that by creating this definition it would only work in favor of the pro-choice cause…? If not, then how would/could it benefit the opposing pro-life cause?

These are serious questions that anyone concerned with abortion should be asking themselves.
 
TEPO said:
Okay, I’ll just admit that I lack a certain level of self control so I can’t help myself -I’m going for it…

This is where I’m stumped:

…Why “must” it be?

…How would humanity be bettering itself by working together to create standards by which the term “personhood” would be defined?

…isn’t it true that by creating this definition it would only work in favor of the pro-choice cause…? If not, then how would/could it benefit the opposing pro-life cause?

These are serious questions that anyone concerned with abortion should be asking themselves.
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I don’t think in terms of pro-life or pro-choice when it comes to basic facts. I’m simply pro-the-unborn and their mothers. Defining life as beginning at conception is enough to make it clear that abortion ends real lives.

If we say that the fetus is legally a person from the moment of conception, that makes every unexplained fetal demise a police case. Considering that more than half (some estimate as many as 75%) of all conceptions end in miscarriage that’s simply impractical - a logistical nightmare - not only because of the sheer numbers but because in most cases miscarriages are unexplained.

Again, that’s simply trying to make science do the impossible: explain an avalanche of ‘persons’ dying unexpectedly while completely dependent for life on another person. Makes for a long list of suspected criminals if you ask me.
 
I find that “estimated” percentage tends more than slightly towards the outrageous . Apart from the fact that it would suggest that human nature is more unsuccessful than it is successful in propogation of the species before any free will enters into it (try contrasting that against “Be fruitful and multiply”) , there are some considerably more sober figures presented in the article by Jane Forester ,Family Physician , Glencoe, Illinois , entitled **How Common Are Miscarriages And Why Do They Happen ? **
. . . As far as we are able to determine, it can be approximated that in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy, the miscarriage rate is about 10-15 per cent of a clinically recognizable pregnancy
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. . . The second statistic is that if a live, appropriately grown fetus is present at 8 weeks gestation, the fetal loss rate (miscarriage) over the next 20 weeks (up to 28 weeks) is about 3 percent .
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🤷
 
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