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jmcrae
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Yes, but where does the data come from?The studies are there if you know where to look
If the mothers themselves aren’t aware of these children, then how would scientists find out about them?
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If the mothers themselves aren’t aware of these children, then how would scientists find out about them?
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jmcrae
Guest
This is just a technicality. St. Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe that abortion was “homicide” because he didn’t believe the child had a soul, yet - he considered it to be “pre-human.” However, he still believed that abortion at any stage of development (including what he considered to be the “pre-human” stage) was still a mortal sin, for interfering with the will of God in His creation of a human person.
The Church doctrine that abortion is always wrong has never changed. Just our understanding of when “quickening” occurs - we see the newly-fertilized egg moving independently and purposefully, showing that it indeed does have a soul, at that point in its development. (St. Thomas thought that the child was a passive recipient of actions done to it by the mother’s body, prior to the start of the second trimester; he had no way of observing that it moves around independently, and does things actively for itself.)
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Ender
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Aquinas’ (and the Church’s) position was, unsurprisingly, quite rational. The reason an early abortion wasn’t considered homicide was because you can’t call a homicide the destruction of something that it isn’t known to be human. A homicide is the killing of a human but if what is killed is not known to be human then it cannot be called a homicide. It was, as you pointed out, still considered a grave evil. Sagan’s comment was foolish and misleading.
Ender
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Doc_Keele
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Major_Tom
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thanks…
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Timbothefiveth
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This is to differentiate between something like a skin cell and a fetus. A zygote would not be the cell of someone else.
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jmcrae
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I don’t see anything in the article that shows how the hard data was collected. He seems to be relying on “widely accepted facts” without saying where these “widely accepted facts” actually come from.
Again - if the woman herself is not aware that she had become pregnant, in what manner, and to whom, does she report her loss of pregnancy, to include it in a table of data that would show this information?
That’s one point.
A second point would be, if indeed these numbers are accurate, what it means is that a large number of human beings are dying of causes that we are as yet unable to cure (or even detect) - how is this really all that different from so many five year olds dying of incurable diseases 200 years ago? Are we now going to say that they weren’t actually human beings, because of the large numbers of them dying, and the fact that there was nothing anyone could do about it, at the time?
Keep in mind that during that era of history, it was only the very lucky few who made it to adulthood - most adults had lost several brothers and sisters along the way, and child funerals were quite commonplace.
Even so, though, to murder one’s own child on purpose was still considered a crime and a mortal sin, even though (and perhaps even because of the fact that) so many children were just spontaneously dying, anyway.
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Doc_Keele
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He does actually give references - I wasn’t saying that that paper was an original source. So you can find out if you wish too. I doubt you’ll make the effort tho.
You haven’t really understood what the author was saying, which I thought was pretty clear and explicit in his paper. Only you can explain why
You haven’t really understood what the author was saying, which I thought was pretty clear and explicit in his paper. Only you can explain why
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jmcrae
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It started off with a painful rant against the Catholic Church, so I didn’t read the whole thing, but I skimmed through to see the charts and graphs. I only found one, and it wasn’t based on anything - there was no table of data, nor any reference to source material.
But if it’s so simple, maybe you can just explain to me how this guy knows that these women have lost a pregnancy, when the women themselves didn’t know about it, and thus, couldn’t report it to anyone - rather than me having to dig through this report to try and find an obscure footnote.
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Doc_Keele
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I could read through the references for you, if I had the time, to see the methodology. I don’t intend to, because I don’t have the time, and it’s you that doubts the methods.
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jmcrae
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I’m not even seeing how a “method” is possible. And apparently, you are just trusting that they have one - you haven’t looked it up, either, I’m guessing?
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jilly4ski
Guest
page 16
I am confused, so they cannot clinically detect these pregnancies, but they can can still say they occur? How can they know that the bulk of miscarriages happen before implantation if pregnancy cannot be “clinically detect”[ed] before implantation? That is seriously flawed logic. I read some of the article and can’t believe it got published in a respected journal. Maybe they were trying to bring up controversial issues? It uses highly charged language, and randomly names things like “The Claim” etc.
Not to mention you didn’t answer jmcrae, even if the numbers are correct (in a general way most miscarriages probably do occur before implantation (though I have no scientific proof). So what humans/people/human beings die all the time from disorders, “natural causes” etc. So I don’t see how dying at a specific point in development makes one less a human/person/human being.
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Doc_Keele
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I haven’t got the time to look up these papers. I don’t give a flying fig if you believe the research or not, frankly.
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jilly4ski
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So why did you reference them as if they have the answers if you haven’t even read them? Did you take someones word that they were good scientific papers with the answers you were looking for? :ehh:
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Ender
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This is the obvious response. Even if those unprovable numbers are true it makes no difference as to whether the unborn are fully human or not.
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Doc_Keele
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Jilly4ski, I’m fascinated as to how you and jmcrae comment when you can’t even be bothered to look up the papers. It’s not that I can’t be bothered, it’s just that I haven’t got the time. I have looked at the abstracts however.
Do I have faith that this widely accepted fact backed up by many studies in peer-reviewed journals is true? Yes, I do. The only reason why you and jmcrae don’t I can think of is that it doesn’t suit you to believe it.
Neither, you, jmcrae nor ender seemed to have understood the paper, but never mind, I can only post it, I can’t make you comprehend it:shrug:
Do I have faith that this widely accepted fact backed up by many studies in peer-reviewed journals is true? Yes, I do. The only reason why you and jmcrae don’t I can think of is that it doesn’t suit you to believe it.
Neither, you, jmcrae nor ender seemed to have understood the paper, but never mind, I can only post it, I can’t make you comprehend it:shrug:
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Ender
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The paper may very well be true; the issue isn’t its validity but it’s relevance. Let’s accept for the moment that it is true; what should we conclude from that fact about the humanity of the unborn? Regardless of the real number, it is surely true that some number of zygotes are never implanted in the womb but the size of that number can plainly have no impact in determining whether or not the zygote is or is not human. It can surely make no sense to hold that if only 5% of zygotes are lost then they are human but if 50% are lost they are not.
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Doc_Keele
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Well that’s not what the paper said as such. It is pointing out that if some people do think that zygotes are morally equivalent to the born, then those people are not actually acting like they are.
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jilly4ski
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Sigh, how would knowing that some babies never implant change behavior? Since we cannot know when and if a baby has been created until after implantation (as the article states on page 16), we cannot change any behavior because we do not have the knowledge. We can in principle say the embryo is a human being and alive, but there is nothing we can do to make it implant or even know if one dies. Therefore all we can do is pray for miscarried children, and I know people do this, both specifically and in general.
BTW, I skimmed the relevant article for the topic you were speaking on (since the whole article wasn’t relevant) and read that portion and commented. I don’t really know what your objection is, since the article itself claims that is cannot “clinically” know when a pregnancy occurs before implantation. That is the topic which was under discussion.
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Ahimsa
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If the fetus or embyro is human, then what should be the punishment for killing a fetus or embryo?
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