Rational Abortion Support

[Tlaloc]

manualman:

You love making trouble, don’t you.

We grow by facing challenges.

Your premise is actually similar to that of the Roe v Wade decision. Trouble is that it is bunk.

Viability does not determine personhood. It cannot. The consequences would be hellish. (No more organ transplants, those people aren’t human. No more life support-those people aren’t human! No more preemies needing help…)

Thats incorrect. The argument above has nothing to do with what happens to a human being who has been injured in some way, it only applies to tissue prior to becoming human.

Medical science has already proven conclusively that an embryo is not a part of the womans body. It has totally unique DNA from hers, unlike every other one of her cells. A cyst has the same DNA as the rest of her cells. Even cancer tumors have substantially the sme DNA as the rest of the woman.

Actually you’re mistaken. In the first place the embryo (assuming natural fertilization) has at least half her DNA. In the second place it turns out human chimeras are actually fairly common which means that people by and large do not have only one set of DNA throughout their body. There have been interesting paternity cases that have come about because of this.

If the embryo is demonstrably NOT a part of her body, then what is it? Obviously, it is a new human being. Anybody claiming anything else bears the burdan of proof for that claim. Good luck.

But it is part of her body. It is a tissue supported and nurtured by her body.

 

[Tlaloc]

renee1258:

I was under the belief that supporters of abortion are completely aware that they are killing a human being. It’s unique DNA, stem cells, and ability to develop isn’t enough even at its most primitive of stages, i.e. conception.

Well you’ve learned something new then.

The legal argument is that they have the right to do it, because of the physical attachment to their womb. As a matter of bodily rights, they have the right to physically detach themselves. Under the same theory the government can not forced a person into bone marrow transplant to save another, even if they are a perfect match and it is certian that the other person would die.

There are many different arguments you can make for and against abortion. I’m just trying to give one as an example.

That is how the law was taught to me. People who keep making these argument that it isn’t really alive are just in denial a life is being destroyed. Not very rational at all.

Nobody said it wasn’t alive. What I said is it isn’t a separate living thing, because before a certain point it isn’t. It is intrinsically linked to the mother’s system.

A human in its primitive stages of development can’t not survive outside the womb. A fully developed human can not survive without air, so if I submerge a person in water taking them outside a habitat I know they can not survive in and they drown is it murder?

The difference being the human is a living thing unto itself. Yes of course it relies on an environment but it does not rely on a host organism to provide its bodily functions.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

Tlaloc:

It was simply an example. Obviously a fetus is more comparable to the other tissues of the mother’s body.

I assume you don’t consider any scrap of flesh to be human, rather you use a particular definition. That definition is debatable. Having the debate in a mature way is not evil.

No. the unborn child is distinct in DNA and form and the FACT it is a seperate life is evident.The debate in itself is not evil, the ideaology of the dehumanization of the unbornchild is:tsktsk: A scrap of flesh like a mole or cyst is not human and never will be,an unborn child is human and always will be,regardless of age,they do not mysteriously become unhuman.God Bless

 

[Tlaloc]

Elizabeth B.:

From a biological perspective, the fetus is a unique individual(separate DNA) from his mother. He is human (once again, detrmined by DNA). Although the baby depends entirely on his mother during this stage he is a living organism (takes in nutrition and is growing.) Science has already determined the point that human life originates. That point is called conception.

The DNA angle is handled above. But what the heck lets play with it a moment. So a fetus is a separate human being because it has different DNA? Okay lets look at an organ transplant. Thats tissue with a different set of DNA, is it also a separate human being? No because it is not a full biological system, only part of one, exactly like a fetus.

Removing a cyst is not murder, because a cyst is not a full human being. You and I were never cysts. We were never moles and we were never disfunctional kidneys. We were, in the earliest stages of our lives, human embryos. We became infants, then toddlers, then children and so on.

You were also an ovum but removing one is not murder. You were once a single cell yet removing thousands of cells is not murder.

As much as I loved my mother and am grateful for all she sacrificed for me, I was never my mother. As much as I love my children, they were never me.

By this definition for a time they were part of you.

Redefining terms to suit an individual’s purpose is Orwellian and a common technique used to spread propoganda and misinformation.

Carefully defining terms in the first place is scientific. We have different definitions. Each of us can support our choice of definition. Which leaves us with two internally consistent but contradictory conclusions. Once we establish that basis we can work toward a resolution.

These techniques have been used quite effectively by the abortion industry to convince people that a fetus is just a blob of cells (yes – that’s what they called babies for many years) and the issue is about choice not life.

Rationally a fetus can be seen as simply a blob of cells for the reasons I’ve outlined. Until you respect that you’ll never make any headway.

 

[chicago]

Scott Waddell:

The best argument the pro-abortionists can make is an appeal to agnosticism: that we don’t know when an embryo is a human. Their argument fails because even if one admits they don’t know if it is human or not, one is morally compelled to err on the side that it is human. To do otherwise is like a hunter firing into rustling bushes without knowing what he is shooting at.

Scott

Actually, about the best argument which they presently make is to acknowledge that the child is human, acknowledge the mother’s grief, then ritualize the proceedure and the grieving process. Honest pro-aborts (who recognize that they can’t reasonably deny the child’s humanity) will argue that this is the most merciful thing which can be done to help the woman.

 

[Tlaloc]

Elizabeth B.:

There are many people waiting desperately for babies.

Must suck to be one of the 100,000 kids waiting to be adopted.
library.adoption.com/How-to-Adopt/Should-You-Adopt/article/2574/1.html

Babies get all the breaks.

 

[Tlaloc]

chicago:

Ironically, many people will argue that giving up the child for adoption or whatever is worse than abortion. There is something to the finality of it all. I suppose that it, too, is linked to the bliss of denial.

Well you can certainly argue that a quick death can be preferable to lingering privation. I’m not saying its an argument I tend to buy myself but again there is some sense to it.

 

[Stephen-Maguire]

What about a person living on an artificial lung or some-other life support, do we kill those too ? those people can’t live on their own like the unborn child.

http://www.splashbulb.com/shared/001/26/51/921041_7_1.jpg

You know what,there has been a mountain of discussion on this forum about abortion, and you can debate it untill your blue in the face, I’ll never agree with it.
And my participation to this thread is over.

 

[Tlaloc]

Scott Waddell:

The best argument the pro-abortionists can make is an appeal to agnosticism: that we don’t know when an embryo is a human. Their argument fails because even if one admits they don’t know if it is human or not, one is morally compelled to err on the side that it is human. To do otherwise is like a hunter firing into rustling bushes without knowing what he is shooting at.

Scott

By this definition we have a pretty clear demarcation of when it is human: when it could live on its own outside of the mother’s womb. As I said determining when precisely that happens would be left up to medical science.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

Tlaloc:

The DNA angle is handled above. But what the heck lets play with it a moment. So a fetus is a separate human being because it has different DNA? Okay lets look at an organ transplant. Thats tissue with a different set of DNA, is it also a separate human being? No because it is not a full biological system, only part of one, exactly like a fetus.

You were also an ovum but removing one is not murder. You were once a single cell yet removing thousands of cells is not murder.

By this definition for a time they were part of you.

Carefully defining terms in the first place is scientific. We have different definitions. Each of us can support our choice of definition. Which leaves us with two internally consistent but contradictory conclusions. Once we establish that basis we can work toward a resolution.

Rationally a fetus can be seen as simply a blob of cells for the reasons I’ve outlined. Until you respect that you’ll never make any headway.

Well, according to former abortion doctors and credible science that doesn’t have an evil self serving agenda you are wrong.Your argument is the same one that the church of euthanasia uses,we are parasites to the earth and we should save the earth and kill ourselves.That does not strike you as irrational?God Bless

 

[Tlaloc]

Lets add another consideration:

If they really get cloning technology going to the point that from a portion of a human being they can create a whole, i.e. you find a severed hand and from that grow a copy of the human that was once attached to it then by the definition being used here (for the most part) by anti-abortion posters any cell on your body is then equivilent to a fetus. It has the potential, with a little help from medicine, to be a fully separate human being. Logically then the anti-abortion position is then faced with a serious dilemma. Is it no longer okay to have a haircut? Or to shower knowing you are scrubbing off millions of proto-humans?

On the other hand the definition I’m using encounters no such difficulty. The tissue is just tissue, unless and until, it becomes a whole organism.

 

[Scott_Waddell]

Tlaloc:

By this definition we have a pretty clear demarcation of when it is human: when it could live on its own outside of the mother’s womb. As I said determining when precisely that happens would be left up to medical science.

I offered no definition and you have not even remotely established that it is human when it could live outside the womb. My contention which has been left unanswered is that the mere possibility that it is human morally obligates us to treat it as such.

Scott

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

Tlaloc:

Lets add another consideration:

If they really get cloning technology going to the point that from a portion of a human being they can create a whole, i.e. you find a severed hand and from that grow a copy of the human that was once attached to it then by the definition being used here (for the most part) by anti-abortion posters any cell on your body is then equivilent to a fetus. It has the potential, with a little help from medicine, to be a fully separate human being. Logically then the anti-abortion position is then faced with a serious dilemma. Is it no longer okay to have a haircut? Or to shower knowing you are scrubbing off millions of proto-humans?

On the other hand the definition I’m using encounters no such difficulty. The tissue is just tissue, unless and until, it becomes a whole organism.

Cloning is a giant act of pride and reminds me of a frankinstein movie.And again you have missed the point an unborn child is an unborn child.They are not proto-humans or puppies or earwigs:whacky: They are humans.God Bless

 

[chicago]

You were also an ovum but removing one is not murder.

No. The ovum is the egg which must be fertilized and from which a human being is produced, but you were never an ovum as the new life of it’s own had not yet begun. The real crux, then, becomes when human life begins and just what it means to be human.

no the fetus has the potential to become a child someday, it is not a child yet.

I suppose that it is all in how one defines “child” and what they mean by that term. It could be argued that childhood is just a natural human development stage. No different that being an adolescent, adult, eldery person. If this is so, then we should also recognize that the stages of embryo and fetus are no different, save that the same being is younger and less mature.

Carefully defining terms in the first place is scientific. We have different definitions. Each of us can support our choice of definition. Which leaves us with two internally consistent but contradictory conclusions. Once we establish that basis we can work toward a resolution.

It could be argued, however, that the definition you are seeking is more about philosophy of the nature of man rather than the science of the matter.

 

[Brendan]

Tlaloc:

In this case i would not define a fetus before a scertain stage of pregnancy as a person for the simple reason that they are not a separate living organism. They are an extension of the mother’s body.

So Theloc,

It is your premise then, that pregnant women have 4 arms, 4 legs and half of them have testicles?

Is that what you are trying to say here?

 

[Tlaloc]

Scott Waddell:

I offered no definition and you have not even remotely established that it is human when it could live outside the womb. My contention which has been left unanswered is that the mere possibility that it is human morally obligates us to treat it as such.

Scott

Sorry for the misunderstanding by “this definition” I refer to the one I used in starting the thread. I did indeed establish that once it comprises a whole organism it is a human being if by establish you mean state it explicitly. If you mean prove it then we run into a snag. Human being isn’t a sufficiently rigorous term that it can be proven. It is in fact the definition we are wrangling with right now.

According to this definition there is no “mere possibility” it is human because we have constructed a logical world view in which it is not a human being.

 

[Tlaloc]

Lisa4Catholics:

Cloning is a giant act of pride and reminds me of a frankinstein movie.And again you have missed the point an unborn child is an unborn child.They are not proto-humans or puppies or earwigs:whacky: They are humans.God Bless

Yes but before becoming an unborn child it is a fetus and a fetus is simply a set of tissues. It becomes a child once it has reached a state that it is an organism unto itself.

 

[Elizabeth_B]

Tlaloc:

You were also an ovum but removing one is not murder. You were once a single cell yet removing thousands of cells is not murder.

This is not true. I was never an ovum. I came into existence at conception. My DNA is a combination of a portion of my father’s and a portion of my mother’s. My soul was created by God.

By this definition for a time they were part of you.

Once again, this is not true. They were not part of me. They were within me, intimately connected with me. These words and concepts are distinctly different.

Carefully defining terms in the first place is scientific.

I’m not sure why you think carefully defining terms is “scientific” – although I believe it is critical to communication. That is why I insist you we use accurate terms. (see above comment.)

We have different definitions. Each of us can support our choice of definition.

The definitions you propose distort commonly held definitions in both the secular and scientific world. As I said in my first post, this manipulation of words is Orwellian.

Which leaves us with two internally consistent but contradictory conclusions. Once we establish that basis we can work toward a resolution.

What resolution are you working towards?

Rationally a fetus can be seen as simply a blob of cells for the reasons I’ve outlined. Until you respect that you’ll never make any headway.

You have made your disdain for the pro-life position clear.

Must suck to be one of the 100,000 kids waiting to be adopted.

This article did not specify how many of these children are infants. Based upon the experiences of friends, I assume that most of them are not infants. While each child is sacred, the reality is that it is more difficult to find homes for older children. Since these children are not the ones in danger of being aborted, their status is not relevant to the abortion discussion.

 

[Tlaloc]

chicago:

No. The ovum is the egg which must be fertilized and from which a human being is produced, but you were never an ovum as the new life of it’s own had not yet begun.

correct the new life begins once the fetus develops enough to become a separate organism. Before that it is merely part of another organism.

The real crux, then, becomes when human life begins and just what it means to be human.

Precisely. The goal here was to show that by starting with a slightly different viewpoint on what is “human” we reach opposite conclusions. Hence maybe we can knock off all the inflamatory speech and treat each other maturely.

It could be argued, however, that the definition you are seeking is more about philosophy of the nature of man rather than the science of the matter.

indeed, if it were purely science the question should be relatively easy to answer. Since it does rely on intabgibles we need to tread more softly.

 

[Tlaloc]

Brendan:

So Theloc,

It is your premise then, that pregnant women have 4 arms, 4 legs and half of them have testicles?

Is that what you are trying to say here?

Once the fetus is far enough along to have arms and legs and heads, yes that’s a fair statement. It’s certainly not the main point of the argument of course.