My eyes are just fine. I’m quite thoroughly jaded as far as gross pictures go.
I’ll pass; I have no need for my friends to think I have any stranger fetishes than the ones they know about. I know very well what I’m defending, and I’ve never said it’s pretty or nice – quite the opposite, in fact.
[COLOR=black said:
Mirdath said:
Don’t follow you. Let’s get back to the point of contention, what is a human being. Here is your argument:
*Insurance, Medicaid. American citizens have made a commitment towards neonatal ICU’s through taxes and private resources. *
There’s always a “why” but we may not always know the “why.” Your previous comment:
Mirdath said:
*The users of neonatal intensive care services are the fetus, proto-human, parasite (whatever term you prefer since it seems that you don’t believe it’s human). I never said anything about not providing the mother care. My comment still stands and you seem to agree that we should not be obligated to provide neonatal intensive care services for the proto-humans from illegal aliens. *
Mirdath said:
Gabriel Don’t follow you. Let’s get back to the point of contention said:That’s the gist of it, yes.
Here’s where it seems you misinterpreted me
I argue that prematurely born babies are just as human as those born naturally – they are both outside the womb. If I said otherwise I’d be contradicting my own argument you summed up so well above
‘On the way’ is what I said because I believe humanity is a process, or a journey, if you like. It’s not a clear, black and white definition. Maslow’s pyramid is a fairly good guide to what makes us human: first we satisfy our physical needs, next our emotional, next our intellectual, and finally we reach the top: ‘self-actualization’ or enlightenment, if you will. Infants obviously do not move above the bottom two tiers for a while; yet they are on the way to the top – and without requiring a direct connection to another to make their way into the bottom level. We are all ‘on the way’. I don’t believe this journey ever truly ends.
Tell that to a victim of a serious car accident – if they’re capable of hearing or understanding you. People come and go from life support all the time.
Masses of people have no health insurance. I’m currently one of them. Not everyone qualifies for Medicaid – and good luck applying in time if you do qualify and find yourself pregnant. How fast are your tax returns?
I’m glad this sort of thing has apparently never been a personal issue in most of your well-manicured lives. For most people even in the US, life isn’t so kind – and just try to imagine what it’s like in the rest of the world.
Neonatal ICUs are outside the scope here. By the time a baby is in there, it’s already been born, and if it needs care, I say give it care.
Prenatal care is used by the mother – if she has the money. Most women who have abortions can’t afford that kind of treatment.
In the end, I suppose my main argument could be boiled down to this: if women are to subordinate their lives entirely to the possibility of pregnancy, how can we say they are free human beings? They are being treated as farm animals at best, breeding machines at worst – and no amount of mealy-mouthed ‘respect for women’ will raise that status an inch until that attitude disappears.
One way to support evil is to wear blinders. There were many Germans who lived by the railroad tracks and saw trains full of starving Jews go by, but “had no idea what was happening.”
Buit she isn’t – she’s caught at her most vulnerable, deprived of the support of her parents, and aborted not even understanding what’s happening to her.
I have children. I love them. There is no trauma there.
I am advocating not protecting those who prey on children. I am advocating getting a child out of a dangerous and destructive environment.
Oh, yes you have – when you decided she should be cut off from parental support, aborted and thrown back into the same environment.
You say that, after saying this?
What nonsense!
Are you ready to kill millioins of babies?
What a snotty remark.
Tell me when you plan to do that? You have the technology ready right now?
Going to the stars doesn’t have much moral or financial support, either.
Then why do they kill them?
Then why do you support a system that sets them adrift?
That’s what happens in these abortion mills – the school nurse takes the kid to the abortion mill, brings her back and cuts her loose. And the rapists are never prosecuted because the crime is concealed.
Your posts are getting more and more disjointed, with more emotion and less and less logic.
You assert, I deny. What makes a 30 week old prematurely delivered fetus which can’t even breathe on it’s own human? I think the assertion (not human) logically flows from the premise which you accepted.
Human beings are able to live with-out a physical attachment to the mother.
Mirdath said:
*Why is the premature owed care if it’s humanity is not established? Do you think an embryo is human simply because it’s outside the womb? *
*Take the man who gets a woman pregnant (maybe a one night stand or even a longer relationship). Why should he subordinate his entire life to providing support for a child he never wanted? Isn’t he being treated as a slave, a beast of burden? How can we say he is a **free human being? ***Men are put in jail for failure to pay child support.
I’m sorry you don’t like it, and I am honestly glad your pregnancy is going so well – but if it weren’t, I’d choose your well-being over that of your child if I had to make that choice.
Am I a Nazi or a blindfolded fool? Keep your comparison consistent!
Childbirth is generally a mess of screaming and blood. For a ten-year-old, it’s also strange and unfamiliar and scary – not to mention, her body is tiny compared to how it should be to deliver and an 8-lb baby is about to push its way out of a still very small orifice.
Please show me where I said anything of the sort.
Why yes. Just because I don’t happen to possess one particular factiod you’d like me to doesn’t make me poorly informed by any means.
True though. First-hand means you’ve been there, done that, and got the t-shirt yourself. All you have is second-hand experience – as do I, but I’ve never claimed first-hand.
It has more than what I proposed does.
Because they can’t raise them, in some cases can’t bring them to term at all.
I’m sorry I accidentally started to reduce myself to your level. I’ll go back up.
As I’ve repeated time and time again, the ability to live – even with life support – separately from the mother. To say they aren’t human does not necessarily follow from my argument.
If they have been delivered and are capable of being helped medically – yes, they can. It doesn’t mean they will survive being born prematurely, but it’s worth trying.
So has the humanity of a delivered child, premature or no.
Indeed, why should he do so? And why should she?
Men do not and cannot ‘subordinate their lives to the possibility of pregnancy’, by definition. If they want to voluntarily subordinate their lives to the possibility of someone else being pregnant, that’s their choice (and a good one to make), but they do not have to deal with pregnancy itself – and they always have that choice to stay with the effects of their actions or not.
I disagree with Singer on his fundamental philosophical stance. He’s a utilitarian, which I believe is a heavily flawed system – it requires one quantify and compare levels of happiness like a ledger. We arrive at slightly similar results as far as abortion is concerned; but you should be able to tell by now that I do not condone infanticide.
First, I don’t agree that childbirth is universally unappealing. I’ve given birth many times and while it is messy and painful, there is great beauty to behold a newborn baby. But I do agree that the abortion issue is visceral because it* is* about childbirth–it is a form of childbirth where the premature human emerges from the womb often in pieces and virtually always dead.
I don’t buy your argument that a human fetus is only a potential human. I don’t buy your other argument that a socio path is not human either. The socio-path is an *evil *human. The human fetus is a very young *human. *All of us were once at the fetal stage of development.
And that is what this debate about “choice” boils down to: the choice between right and wrong. Abortion is a wrong choice.
Of course a five year old doesn’t have full responsibility for deciding the path or his or her entire life, nor does the five year old’s mother have the right to destroy her child.
Oh good, we agree! Now, how will we ever get closer to utopia if we limit our choices only to the choice between two ills? Sometimes it appears to come down to the only the choice between two ills *because we made a wrong choice several steps back *when we could have made the right choice. That is the case in abortion. You said yourself abortion is universally physically unappealing. We have better choices available for women, but the good choices take place well before pregnancy.
I am so sorry, but that is exactly what abortion is - you may want to quantify, manipulate language terms and science, deny, but abortion IS infanticide.
Of course it is – and that’s why pro-abortionists get so upset at pictures of aborted children, because it makes it perfectly clear that they are fully human.
Only because there is no other alterative within modern medicine. If there were some way to save the baby, we would be required to use that method.
Sometimes there just isn’t a right choice anymore. It’d be nice if superheroes existed and every plot point could be resolved by a quick deus ex machina, but life doesn’t work like a script.
Those ‘good choices’ don’t necessarily exist in the first place. And even if so, and two people made what they thought was a ‘good choice’, why should only one of them have to deal with the effects if and when they realize it wasn’t such a good idea? The father can be a part of it if he wants to; the mother doesn’t have that option.
In that case you should support the life-of-the-mother exception. Since you don’t, you are placing the potential life of the child ahead of the life of the mother. What you want for both the woman and child doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t put your money and your deeds where your mouth is. You’re exploiting them both to stroke your own conscience.
Thanks for the thoughts, but those happened over a decade ago
She made her peace with it as best she could before she even went in – she wouldn’t have done it if not. She’s just fine now, is ready and (hopefully; she is older now and has some fertility issues) able to have children I believe you that she made peace with it as best she could before going in for the procedure, but like all of us she did not know the future. She might begin to view the abortion differently now, *especially *if she is dealing with fertility issues.Thanks for the thoughts, but those happened over a decade ago
So here’s your argument.
The humanity of the delivered child is no longer commonly accepted and under increasing attack in the West. There’s infanticide in the Netherlands and as I said, a leading bioethicist in the US support infanticide.
*At least, he has a system. Your assertions aren’t a philosophical system. I just don’t think location says much about humanness. Orin Hatch argues that the embryo is not human because it’s not in the womb, you argue that the fetus is human only outside. Location doesn’t differentiate between human and other animals. Location doesn’t infer any moral position. Both positions (yours and Hatch) strike me as a contrivances rather than any systematic philosophical approach. *
I’d rather debate than split hairs endlessly. Labor means the child is on its way out and the direct physical dependence on the mother is essentially over, and it’s either alive and viable or a stillbirth/miscarriage. End of question.
And I do not condone that.
There’s no way to apply an entire philosophical system universally to pregnancy beyond basic physical truths (viability, inside/outside, etc). Each pregnancy and each mother is unique; I’ve said this time and time again.
Singer himself has an incredibly weak position. Utilitarianism is all well and good on the chalkboard, but as soon as you hit the street it’s worthless.
No, a fetus is human with potential.
