So is it or isn't it a human

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St_Francis said:
You have not explained why you think the points that you brought up are profound, and if you were to do so, we might understand better why you bring them up. In the absence of such explanation, we react as we see the words, and all too often, we see those words in the mouths of those who are pushing abortion.
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so you think I’m pushing abortion…OK:hmmm:
so if someone holds a certain position (not necessarily abortion, but on anything really), then everything they say is automatically wrong?:hmmm::hmmm:

I would not be the best judge of whether or not the points I’ve made are profound or not, but the issues are undoubtedly profound and many of the arguments have been simplistic rather than simple IMO.
 
Doc_Keele said:
so you think I’m pushing abortion…OK:hmmm:
so if someone holds a certain position (not necessarily abortion, but on anything really), then everything they say is automatically wrong?:hmmm::hmmm:

I would not be the best judge of whether or not the points I’ve made are profound or not, but the issues are undoubtedly profound and many of the arguments have been simplistic rather than simple IMO.
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Hi Doc, no disrespect intended but the issues are not profound at all because the question as to its humanity is ridiculous. Anyone who believes in God as our Creator accepts the humanity by nature. No one can deny with credibility its humanity and all recognize the origin and species as one to itself, human. In reality, even those who argue it is not human have no realistic grounds as the argument itself is presented on a foundation of questions not answers or absolutes. That is unless you have sound credible support for refuting the issues I raised earlier. It is however, argued for the reasons I mentioned previously which you haven’t responded to, being “scientific or medical support” to acquire legalized selective abortion. It’s ironic that pro-abortionists have such a hard time saying that word even though they promote it. You seem to argue your points for a love of science, a couple areas of science I believe) that also seemingly suggests to some you are pro-abortion but as you have referred to yourself as Christian, I still tend to think you are more debating to learn others position and reasoning rather than to support abortion. Is that correct or have I misunderstood?
 
You’re right I don’t support abortion, and that I’m here more to debate.
I do however believe that abortion is permissible in certain exceptional circumstances, e.g. where the mother’s life is seriously endangered.

The problem is with defining exactly what is meant by the question. If the question is whether or not a human foetus is human, then it is banal and not worthy of a moment’s debate.
 
Abortion is another abdication of responsibility, it starts with irresponsible acts and ends in irresponsible acts.
 
Doc_Keele said:
so you think I’m pushing abortion…OK:hmmm:
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I already said that I don’t think you necessarily are, but that you bring up things that those who do bring up. In reality, this is a kindness, because you might not realise what sort of impression you are making on people when you talk the way you do.

If you want to figure out how to argue against someone who holds that position, it’s best to be upfront about it and say, when I discuss this issue and someone brings up this argument, what’s a good response?
so if someone holds a certain position (not necessarily abortion, but on anything really), then everything they say is automatically wrong?:hmmm::hmmm:
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Well, if someone is a proponent of abortion’s being legal, and they justify that position by bringing up certain arguments, and the arguments are specious, then I would say that those arguments are specious and I wouldn’t trust what they said in the area of that issue.
I would not be the best judge of whether or not the points I’ve made are profound or not, but the issues are undoubtedly profound and many of the arguments have been simplistic rather than simple IMO.
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You accused two people of ignoring profound issues. Since you did not clarify which of the issues brought up here were the ones you were referring to, it appeared that you were referring to the points which you brought up. So it kinda looks like you thought that the issues you brought up were profound.

But you aren’t telling us why you think that things like the difference between the terms human and human being; sentience, viability, birth; all that stuff–are you just throwing that stuff out there because you like to argue? because you want to find out what the arguments against those points are? or because you really believe that those points have some bearing on anything in the issue of abortion?

And if your motive for bringing those things up is that you believe that they are profound–as you yourself seem to have stated, in the absence of any other antecedent–then we would like to know why you think they are important.
 
OK - we all agree that the issue of personhood (which for me is the central debate of the thread) is important?
If the pro-life brigade really, really want to persuade non-Christian people to not support the pro-choice position, they need to come up with an argument other than the “life begins at conception” one. That when these other issues become important. You might not agree:shrug:
In which case you can keep on doing the same things in the hope of getting a different result.
 
Doc_Keele said:
You’re right I don’t support abortion, and that I’m here more to debate.
I do however believe that abortion is permissible in certain exceptional circumstances, e.g. where the mother’s life is seriously endangered.

The problem is with defining exactly what is meant by the question. If the question is whether or not a human foetus is human, then it is banal and not worthy of a moment’s debate.
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Yes, I use to believe under certain circumstances it had to be acceptable. As an Investigator relating to a victim of rape or as you say were it was the choice between saving a women’s life, but I lived deeply into the world with all its trimmings and did not have the knowledge or relationship with God to understand better at the time until driving down the highway one morning with abortion being the furthest thing from my mind I was quite suddenly and harshly given the opportunity to look into the eyes of the aborted in a way you could not understand at this point.

Medically you would lean to your opinion. But as a Christian, it is every person’s obligation to know God well enough to realize what He has given and what He desires, maybe not understanding why under certain circumstances, but certainly what belongs to Him as our Creator designing us to His image and likeness. No one has the right to delineate individual values as such. Sounds like a bunch of words, Doc, but the fact is, individual life is equal in all aspects. Man will never medically justify with proof that it is acceptable to terminate the life of the preborn for the life of the women. The reason being one soul has no less meaning or value than that of the other and as I said before, a human being is human when God intends its existence, not when man thinks he can place some value on one over the other. If the life is lost in the process of attempting to save someone, that was not the intention and apparently has meaning in itself as God intended. But the result is not the same as abortion. But to terminate the life of the preborn is to determine the affect the human being will have on everyone he or she will come in contact with throughout his or her future. Even an infant born with afflictions will have a purpose by God whether we understand or see it or not. For instance, someone close to me whom I knew since childhood grew up with an extremely self indulgent chip on her shoulder most likely because of the way she was raised and lived an extremely worldly life in the process. She became pregnant but the doctors determined at some point it would be autistic and perhaps for other expected health problems would be a candidate for abortion. To make a long story short, with great difficulty she chose not to abort and that child affected her so deeply she today is one of the most giving and loving mothers and human beings I know. She has also become an activist in defending for the proper care of autistic children in the medical arena and professional care facilities in the Northeastern United States. Her son is gifted and very artistic but the art he creates raises thoughts and considerations in the minds of most everyone who sees it. Now was it God’s design that he be born to change his mother who now affects the lives of so many others? Or God’s design that the art he creates raises such thought provoking changes in many who see it? He has also been entered into medical journals for several reasons. Now if a doctor performed an abortion lets say, to save her life, would she have become the person she is or remain self indulgent despising the world or who knows what.… This can be true of any preborn even if conceived through evil of another. Or perhaps the preborn would grow to be someone who would have the answers to medical questions we have not found thus far and be responsible for the saving of many other lives.

Think about it.
 
twb - yes, both you and I are both trying to work out what God wants. I’m not trying to create my own religion or anything. I’m don’t believe I’m allowing lack of moral fibre to dictate my conscience. I believe it’s more fundamentally “pro-life” to allow a mother to live rather than let both mother and unborn child die. I understand other people believe differently.
 
If the pro-life brigade really, really want to persuade non-Christian people to not support the pro-choice position, they need to come up with an argument other than the “life begins at conception” one.

Why do they need to do that? Every medical person knows the fetus is an unborn child. That’s a fact, not a speculation.

But if another argument is needed, the most obvious one is:
**
Common sense: we do not kill our children.**

If the pro-choice people can’t see that, it’s because they are not moral people at all. If you can justify killing your own child, you can justify anything.
 
Doc_Keele said:
You’re right I don’t support abortion, and that I’m here more to debate.
I do however believe that abortion is permissible in certain exceptional circumstances, e.g. where the mother’s life is seriously endangered.
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IOW, you support abortion under circumstances with which *you *agree, but not under circumstances with which *you *do not agree. Your agreement or lack thereof relates to the circumstances of the act rather than the *nature *of the act.
The problem is with defining exactly what is meant by the question. If the question is whether or not a human foetus is human, then it is banal and not worthy of a moment’s debate.
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Precisely. If we can all agree that a human life has begun at the human conception, then there is no issue at all–abortion under all circumstances would be wrong, just as killing an already-born child would be wrong to save the life of the mother, for example, to obtain a heart for a transplant.
Doc_Keele said:
OK - we all agree that the issue of personhood (which for me is the central debate of the thread) is important?
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In it’s pure definition, “person” is a legal term meaning an entity treated in a certain way. However, it is meaningless in the abortion debate because it is an arbitrary term–we have made it up. Let me explain: a corporation is a legal person; however, it is not “immoral” to “kill” that particular “person,” is it? The immorality of killing innocent beings comes about when they are *human *beings and/or *humans, *IOW, when the belong to the species Homo Sapiens.

The issue of abortion revolves around the morality of *directly and intentionally taking an innocent human life, *which, as it happens, is always and everywhere wrong. It can only become something else when the defintion of what is happening is *arbitrarily *changed by changing the terms so as to allow some abortions at some times. It is only by dragging in the hair-splitting argument of some unexplainable difference between the terms human and human being, or the issues of “personhood,” or the issues of sentience, consciousness, etc., that one can re-define the point so as to make an argument that some abortions should be allowed some of the time. How far one goes in performing these mental gymnastics depends on how many abortions under how many circumstances one is fighting for.
If the pro-life brigade really, really want to persuade non-Christian people to not support the pro-choice position, they need to come up with an argument other than the “life begins at conception” one. That when these other issues become important. You might not agree 🤷
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The life begins at conception is the *only *argument; that is the essential fact making all abortion wrong all the time. We can explain this statement further, we can show that it is the only important fact, we can do a lot of things, but the one thing that we are not *required *to do is to try to persuade others based on *their *criteria for evidence.
In which case you can keep on doing the same things in the hope of getting a different result.
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The reality is that some people do not want to be persuaded. They set up standards of evidence specifically to exclude the convincing points. What, life begins at conception? Oh, let’s rename conception so “it doesn’t occur” until implantation. What, life begins at conception? Ah, but what *kind *of life? Oh, life begins at conception? Yes, but it’s not really a *person. *Oh, life begins at conception? True, but it’s not really *sentient *life…
 
StFrancis, I hope you won’t think me rude if I don’t go through the same arguments for the nth time?😃
 
Doc_Keele said:
twb - yes, both you and I are both trying to work out what God wants. I’m not trying to create my own religion or anything. I’m don’t believe I’m allowing lack of moral fibre to dictate my conscience. I believe it’s more fundamentally “pro-life” to allow a mother to live rather than let both mother and unborn child die. I understand other people believe differently.
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I know you are not trying to create your own religion doc…

Under the circumstances outlined in red that you presented, If the child cannot be saved independent of the mother and the mother is about to die resulting in the deaths of both if there is no attempt at medical intervention, do you believe that is selectively choosing one life over the other?

Maybe this will help, doc;

“The embryonic child, as seen above (refer to full text source), has a human soul; and therefore is a man from the time of its conception; therefore it has an equal right to its life with its mother; therefore neither the mother, nor medical practitioner, nor any human being whatever can lawfully take that life away.”

"…if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother’s life, is applied to her organism (though the child’s death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though evil consequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted evil consequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended. It is not imputed to us provided four conditions are verified, namely:
  • That we do not wish the evil effects, but make all reasonable efforts to avoid them;
  • That the immediate effect be good in itself;
  • That the evil is not made a means to obtain the good effect; for this would be to do evil that good might come of it — a procedure never allowed;
  • That the good effect be as important at least as the evil effect.
All four conditions may be verified in treating or operating on a woman with child. The death of the child is not intended, and every reasonable precaution is taken to save its life; the immediate effect intended, the mother’s life, is good — no harm is done to the child in order to save the mother — the saving of the mother’s life is in itself as good as the saving of the child’s life."

Source; newadvent.org/cathen/01046b.htm
 
twb - and none of that permits an abortion to save the mother’s life sadly
it’s doubtful that it really permits treatment of ectopic pregnancy either, but that’s a whole other complicated topic
 
Now infamous quote:
Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everybody knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but the taking of a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected. – 1970 issue of California Medicine
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sedonaman said:
If it’s not a baby, how can a woman be a “mother” of it?
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You’re right - it should have been “expectant mother”. What a profound point, and I’m glad to see you’re coming round to my point of view:thumbsup:
 
Doc_Keele said:
twb - and none of that permits an abortion to save the mother’s life sadly
it’s doubtful that it really permits treatment of ectopic pregnancy either, but that’s a whole other complicated topic
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I’m still not sure how directly poisoning and dismembering the child will cure any kind of disease that the mother might have.

The presence of a child in her womb is not, in and of itself, a life-threatening condition, and the mere removal of the child with no other medical assistance can not cure her of anything.

On the other hand, if she is receiving chemotherapy, and the child dies as a consequence of the amount of drugs in her system, that’s not an “abortion” - that is the unavoidable natural death of the child.
 
Doc_Keele said:
You’re right - it should have been “expectant mother”. What a profound point, and I’m glad to see you’re coming round to my point of view:thumbsup:
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Not to your “semantic gymnastics”. If you have to justify it, you are rationalizing, and you know it.
 
sedonaman said:
Not to your “semantic gymnastics”. If you have to justify it, you are rationalizing, and you know it.
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Justify what?

You’re going off on a tangent. Very odd. I don’t know what you’re getting at, and your imagined talents at mind-reading are non-existent.
 
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