Democratic politician angry that letters on his pro-abortion voting record distributed by private group at local Catholic parishes

[HarryStotle]

Annie:

a life begins at conception

That is closer to reality than ‘life’ begins at conception.

Nobody was ever claiming abortion ends ‘life.’

The claim has always been that abortion ends ‘a life.’

It appears you were arguing against your own conception, in the sense of how you conceptualized the issue.

 

[Annie]

That is closer to reality than ‘life’ begins at conception

This statement is to counter those who diminish the fact that the new human exists from conception, preferring some later point. I am not sure people who advocate for abortion’s being legal still use that argument, tho.

 

[Nononony]

The most interesting thing about this entire election cycle (and the years leading up to it) has been watching the candidates train their constituents to loudly declare things like, “don’t shame me!” just before they turn around to say, “shame on you!” It’s not just one side, it’s happening on both sides of the political spectrum and it’s happening on the national and local level (at least where I live. And in Kansas, apparently…)

And people are blind to it. How are people blind to this?

The masses have been trained to recognize gas lighting. But gas lighting abounds…

The masses have been told to stand against hate. But hate is everywhere…

The masses have been enlighten to the wrongs of historical abuse. But we’re creating more abusive history as we go…

The masses have been warned to stand strong against conspiracy theories, but more pump out by the day…

The masses have been told that the media lies… but to trust the media!

The masses have been told we’re all one. We’re all in this together! Well, except for those people over there… they’re against us. We must destroy THEM… and anyone who isn’t with US… because we can’t do anything unless we’re united!

A fascinating time to be alive.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

If y’all insist on calling people who are pro choice ‘pro abortion’ then you are closing the door to any sensible discussions on how to reduce the number of abortions. As long as you know that.

That argument also applies in reverse. Anyone who claims that support for abortion amounts to a mere right to choose is likewise being disingenuous with language.

Abortion is the termination of the life of a human being. A proper or sensible discussion of that begins with the admission of what it is exactly.

It isn’t merely a “right to choose.” It is a right to choose to do something very specific - ending the life of a human being.

As long as we all know that then everyone is on the same page.

Why should “right to choose” be the agreed upon start of a discussion? Home field advantage? Right to choose gets to determine the rules? Why exactly?

I agree with you. Except when you use the term ‘human being’. Most people, myself included, would correlate human being with ‘person’. What a woman is carrying immediately after conception (and even before the pregnancy begins) is not a person.

 

[dochawk]

Which would entail promoting abortions whether a woman wanted one or not.

I’m more surprised that you really haven’t met people who think this way.

Yes there are people that think that poor women should abort their child. There are others that think whichever minority (or all) should, and that they should be requried to do so. Or those with various intellectual defects, or genetic defects, or . . .

but none (including me) would ever ‘want a woman to have an abortion’

Except that there are people that do thin that, and that certain groups of “inappropriate” or “inferior” women should be strongly encouraged, or even coerced, into doing so.

 

[FiveLinden]

Except that there are people that do thin that, and that certain groups of “inappropriate” or “inferior” women should be strongly encouraged, or even coerced, into doing so.

My point is that they would not want her to be pregnant in the first place and would see abortion as the least desirable means of her not having a child.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Which would entail promoting abortions whether a woman wanted one or not.

I’m more surprised that you really haven’t met people who think this way.

Yes there are people that think that poor women should abort their child. There are others that think whichever minority (or all) should, and that they should be requried to do so. Or those with various intellectual defects, or genetic defects, or . . .

That would be pro-eugenics.

 

[jeannetherese]

I agree with you. Except when you use the term ‘human being’. Most people, myself included, would correlate human being with ‘person’

Have you any evidence for your assertion regarding what “most people think?”
Webster’s definition is provided below with a note that the word has been used in this way since the 1600s.

Definition of human being​

: HUMAN

SynonymsExample SentencesLearn More about human being

Synonyms for human being​

• baby,
• being,
• body,
• character,
• creature,
• customer,
• egg,
• guy,
• head,
• human,
• individual,
• life,
• man,
• mortal,
• party,
• person,
• personage,
• scout,
• soul,

Visit the Thesaurus for More

Examples of human being in a Sentence​

She’s a very warm and generous human being . We should do more to help our fellow human beings .

First Known Use of human being​

1694, in the meaning defined above

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

I agree with you. Except when you use the term ‘human being’. Most people, myself included, would correlate human being with ‘person’

Have you any evidence for your assertion regarding what “most people think?”

I just asked my wife and she thinks human being correlates to person. So that is literally everyone sitting on the deck at this moment…

All I can say is that I have never heard anyone (except in discussions regarding abortion) use the term ‘human being’ when they are discussing a blastocyst, a morula, a zygote or a frozen embryo. They’ll use the adjective ‘human’ but not the noun ‘human being’.

 

[jeannetherese]

I just asked my wife and she thinks human being correlates to person. So that is literally everyone sitting on the deck at this moment…

Well, that is 2 out of 2 for a solid majority. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) But I think your poll might be a bit skewed. I don’t think you and I are going to persuade each other to change our views tonight Freddy, but I do enjoy our discussions and wish you and your wife a wonderful time outside.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

I just asked my wife and she thinks human being correlates to person. So that is literally everyone sitting on the deck at this moment…

Well, that is 2 out of 2 for a solid majority. (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) But I think your poll might be a bit skewed. I don’t think you and I are going to persuade each other to change our views tonight Freddy, but I do enjoy our discussions and wish you and your wife a wonderful time outside.

Thanks for that.

And I always hesitate to being personal aspcts of my life into discussions but…my wife became pregnant with what would have been our third many years ago. At a very difficult time. As it turns out the pregnancy ended very early indeed. Almost immediately after she found out. But an abortion was not an option as far as she was concerned. And I fully backed her decision.

As I would have if she had decided otherwise.

 

[jeannetherese]

My condolences on the loss of your child.
My best wishes to you and your family.
jt

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Freddy:

If y’all insist on calling people who are pro choice ‘pro abortion’ then you are closing the door to any sensible discussions on how to reduce the number of abortions. As long as you know that.

That argument also applies in reverse. Anyone who claims that support for abortion amounts to a mere right to choose is likewise being disingenuous with language.

Abortion is the termination of the life of a human being. A proper or sensible discussion of that begins with the admission of what it is exactly.

It isn’t merely a “right to choose.” It is a right to choose to do something very specific - ending the life of a human being.

As long as we all know that then everyone is on the same page.

Why should “right to choose” be the agreed upon start of a discussion? Home field advantage? Right to choose gets to determine the rules? Why exactly?

I agree with you. Except when you use the term ‘human being’. Most people, myself included, would correlate human being with ‘person’. What a woman is carrying immediately after conception (and even before the pregnancy begins) is not a person.

Your mother carried you and no other person in her womb before you were born. You, as a person, didn’t just magically show up at some point in your journey down the birth canal.

It is in the nature of being a human person that a human person develops over time and comes to full capacity over the course of years.

You just appear to have an attenuated idea of person that is akin to an SUV being built on an assembly line where it only becomes a completed thing at the end of the line.

The problem with that conception is that it is contrived and not based on reality. Human beings develop organically from a zygote stage at the beginning. We are not slowly assembled until we only become a person at the end of the line when all our components are in place.

Personhood encompasses the entire process of becoming and living a human life. It is not a concept imposed by morally limited humans who make declarations about who counts and who does not count as a person and at what stage because we the oligarchy of the living say so. That is a biased notion concocted, as CS Lewis stated by …the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

 

[Freddy]

Your mother carried you and no other person in her womb before you were born. You, as a person, didn’t just magically show up at some point in your journey down the birth canal.

It is in the nature of being a human person that a human person develops over time and comes to full capacity over the course of years.

You just appear to have an attenuated idea of person that is akin to an SUV being built on an assembly line where it only becomes a completed thing at the end of the line.

The problem with that conception is that it is contrived and not based on reality. Human beings develop organically from a zygote stage at the beginning. We are not slowly assembled until we only become a person at the end of the line when all our components are in place.

Personhood encompasses the entire process of becoming and living a human life. It is not imposed by morally limited humans who make declarations about who counts and who does not count as a person and at what stage because we the oligarchy of the living say so. That is a biased notion concocted, as CS Lewis stated by …the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

I like your analogy of the car. But if I could change it slightly and use a home.

You deliver your pile of bricks and timber to your wife’s field. But the delivery of the component parts (if you follow the analogy) doesn’t mean that you have a home. You’ve just got the component parts. The house will emerge gradually from those components. And at some point down the track you will stand back and think ‘Yeah, I can see it now. Look girl - it’s our home’. Whereas the pile of bricks when it was delivered was just a pile of bricks.

If your wife said that you couldn’t afford to build the house and had someone remove the bricks just after delivery, you wouldn’t say that your home had been removed. You might think ‘OK, fair enough. The bricks are free anyway. I’ll deliver another load when we’re ready to proceed (and apologies if you think I’m stretching the analogy too far here)’.

That’s how I see it.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Your mother carried you and no other person in her womb before you were born. You, as a person, didn’t just magically show up at some point in your journey down the birth canal.

It is in the nature of being a human person that a human person develops over time and comes to full capacity over the course of years.

You just appear to have an attenuated idea of person that is akin to an SUV being built on an assembly line where it only becomes a completed thing at the end of the line.

The problem with that conception is that it is contrived and not based on reality. Human beings develop organically from a zygote stage at the beginning. We are not slowly assembled until we only become a person at the end of the line when all our components are in place.

Personhood encompasses the entire process of becoming and living a human life. It is not imposed by morally limited humans who make declarations about who counts and who does not count as a person and at what stage because we the oligarchy of the living say so. That is a biased notion concocted, as CS Lewis stated by …the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

I like your analogy of the car. But if I could change it slightly and use a home.

You deliver your pile of bricks and timber to your wife’s field. But the delivery of the component parts (if you follow the analogy) doesn’t mean that you have a home. You’ve just got the component parts. The house will emerge gradually from those components. And at some point down the track you will stand back and think ‘Yeah, I can see it now. Look girl - it’s our home’. Whereas the pile of bricks when it was delivered was just a pile of bricks.

If your wife said that you couldn’t afford to build the house and had someone remove the bricks just after delivery, you wouldn’t say that your home had been removed. You might think ‘OK, fair enough. The bricks are free anyway. I’ll deliver another load when we’re ready to proceed (and apologies if you think I’m stretching the analogy too far here)’.

That’s how I see it.

The bricks and timber do not build themselves into a house.

The house does not develop organically from within itself. It is assembled and constructed by outside workers.

Big difference.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

HarryStotle:

Your mother carried you and no other person in her womb before you were born. You, as a person, didn’t just magically show up at some point in your journey down the birth canal.

It is in the nature of being a human person that a human person develops over time and comes to full capacity over the course of years.

You just appear to have an attenuated idea of person that is akin to an SUV being built on an assembly line where it only becomes a completed thing at the end of the line.

The problem with that conception is that it is contrived and not based on reality. Human beings develop organically from a zygote stage at the beginning. We are not slowly assembled until we only become a person at the end of the line when all our components are in place.

Personhood encompasses the entire process of becoming and living a human life. It is not imposed by morally limited humans who make declarations about who counts and who does not count as a person and at what stage because we the oligarchy of the living say so. That is a biased notion concocted, as CS Lewis stated by …the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

I like your analogy of the car. But if I could change it slightly and use a home.

You deliver your pile of bricks and timber to your wife’s field. But the delivery of the component parts (if you follow the analogy) doesn’t mean that you have a home. You’ve just got the component parts. The house will emerge gradually from those components. And at some point down the track you will stand back and think ‘Yeah, I can see it now. Look girl - it’s our home’. Whereas the pile of bricks when it was delivered was just a pile of bricks.

If your wife said that you couldn’t afford to build the house and had someone remove the bricks just after delivery, you wouldn’t say that your home had been removed. You might think ‘OK, fair enough. The bricks are free anyway. I’ll deliver another load when we’re ready to proceed (and apologies if you think I’m stretching the analogy too far here)’.

That’s how I see it.

The bricks and timber do not build themselves into a house.

The house does not develop organically from within itself. It is assembled and constructed by outside workers.

Big difference.

Yeah. It’s an anaology. Not meant to be taken as a direct comparison.

 

[HarryStotle]

Yeah. It’s an anaology. Not meant to be taken as a direct comparison.

Then of what value is the comparison if it isn’t a comparison?

An analogy need not have all aspects as comparables, that is why the comparison is merely analogous. However, to make the relevant point the analogy ought to directly compare the critical aspects being highlighted.

So I am not clear why you would bring up the building of a house as an analogue for procreating a child. This is especially puzzling when my entire point was that the development of a person is nothing like assembling a vehicle because one (a child) develops organically while the other (a vehicle) is constructed.

What you did was swap the construction of a house for the assembly of vehicle so as to (apparently) argue that parents procreating a child are merely “contributing” materials.

My reply would be that your swapping house for vehicle adds nothing to your point because the house, just like the vehicle, must be constructed (assembled) which is the crucial feature that is not comparable to the development of a human being (aka human person). The source of raw materials isn’t relevant to the comparison of how the “products” come to take their form.

So your analogy misses the key point because constructing a house is no more analogous to the development of a human being than assembling a vehicle is. Which is why the nature of a human being is unique - it is generated through an organic process.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Yeah. It’s an anaology. Not meant to be taken as a direct comparison.

Then of what value is the comparison if it isn’t a comparison?

An analogy need not have all aspects as comparables, that is why the comparison is merely analogous. However, to make the relevant point the analogy ought to directly compare the critical aspects being highlighted.

So I am not clear why you would bring up the building of a house as an analogue for procreating a child. This is especially puzzling when my entire point was that the development of a person is nothing like assembling a vehicle because one (a child) develops organically while the other (a vehicle) is constructed.

What you did was swap the construction of a house for the assembly of vehicle so as to (apparently) argue that parents procreating a child are merely “contributing” materials.

My reply would be that your swapping house for vehicle adds nothing to your point because the house, just like the vehicle, must be constructed (assembled) which is the crucial feature that is not comparable to the development of a human being (aka human person). The source of raw materials isn’t relevant to the comparison of how the “products” come to take their form.

So your analogy misses the key point because constructing a house is no more analogous to the development of a human being than assembling a vehicle is. Which is why the nature of a human being is unique - it is generated through an organic process.

I don’t see a problem. But make it organic if you like.

Your wife has a field and you have some seed available to grow some oaks. You plant the seeds but then she says that it’s not the right time. So she gets someone to dig them up.

Lost some seedlings? No problem. You’ve got plenty more. Chop down a nearly fully grown oak tree? No way.

 

[HarryStotle]

I don’t see a problem. But make it organic if you like.

Your wife has a field and you have some seed available to grow some oaks. You plant the seeds but then she says that it’s not the right time. So she gets someone to dig them up.

Lost some seedlings? No problem. You’ve got plenty more. Chop down a nearly fully grown oak tree? No way.

Oak trees are monoecious. That means that they have male and female flowers on the same plant.

One acorn has within it the potential to become a forest of oak trees.

If oak trees had gone extinct on earth and you hold in your hand the last viable acorn on earth, you hold in your hand a forest of oak trees.

That is a big deal if you value oak trees.

Ergo, the only reason you devalue the acorn is because of a false understanding of what acorns are, in fact. It is you applying the economic Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns to morality. I.e., you are treating the moral value of human beings as no different from the way economic value is calculated. As in the value of human beings can be diminished by the fact than there are more on earth than we need, so it would be just fine to find ways of getting rid of the superfluous ones. Embryos, according to your light, are like acorns that can be diminished in value because there is a superabundance of them. However, the fact that there is a superabundance of them does not diminish the fact that each acorn is a forest of oaks in a shell. It is your penchant for devaluing acorns and embryos that makes you think they are not valuable.

Your “no problem” comment demonstrates clearly that your argument vis a vis the value of embryos is based entirely on your personal schema of values and not upon a clear understanding of the realities in play. And that schema arises as the result of your privileged perspective as one of the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about in a time and place where acorns abound.

 

[Freddy]

Your “no problem” comment demonstrates clearly that your argument vis a vis the value of embryos is based entirely on your personal schema of values…

Quite right. My argument is exactly based on perceived value. Which is subjective by definition.