Does life begin at conception? I think it does.

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: 5010 Yep, some value the human organism's life and others value a life that arises from the psyche. Both arguments seem consistent to me.

Exactly.


Neither side can be proven.

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: Marilyn Monroe It's the mother's right to privacy. The laws have all taken into consideration when life begins, and so forth, but because this life is so dependant it has no rights till a certain point, and this is to be determined by the doctor, and the mother. This is the right to privacy by law. I don't think it's got anything to do with personality, it's the mother's rights.

I don't mean my argument from a legal perspective. I mean, when I press prochoice types on this issue, that is how they wind up justifying killing a new embryo or fetus.

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: Z What about a person with multiple personality disorder? Do each of those personalities deserve equal human rights? In that case, is it murder or some kind of wrongful imprisonment for a psychiatrist to try to get the "main" persona to suppress the others?

Can we agree that it would be murder for someone to wipe your mind, and install a new personality with a new set of memories inside your head?

I believe that with multiple personality disorder, they attempt integration, not suppression.

But as fushigi pointed out, there are times when brainwaves are non-existent. Those times to not suddenly invalidate human rights.

At such times, the personality is present, but not active. A new embryo has zero personality.

When you mention that I'm making a legal argument, that's what this is all about, right? Rights.

It is about what we think the law should say, as opposed to proper interpretation of existing laws.

The fetus has human rights from conception

No. In the U.S., it does not.

[ZNFYRH]

pikatore,

I think it's funny when someone tells me what I think.

I repeat, I don't agree with abortion.

But I agree with someone's right to mind their own body and life.

Just like I don't agree with fighting, but someone has a right to defend themselves if their life is threatened.

CC,

I want to be clear on this... you're saying that the presence of a personality is when a fetus should have human rights?

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: Z I want to be clear on this... you're saying that the presence of a personality is when a fetus should have human rights?

I am saying that that seems to be the dividing line, when you really press prochoicers on the issue.

Many prochoice types think abortion should be legal until the day the child is born. However, must of them do not morally support late term abortions. However, most do feel ok about morning after pills.

If you press them enough on the issue, and they do not attempt to kill because you have driven them so nuts, then their thinking seems to come down to whether or not it has thoughts and feelings.

When you then press them about the issue of people in comas, they say that is different because they had thoughts and feelings, and those will return when they wake up.

So...

Translating all of that into my own words...

The best I can figure is that it is all about the presence of a personality, even if that personality is on hold.


For my own view - I am morally OK with the use of the morning after pill. No brain, no thoughts, etc...

Legally, I think it should be legal in the first trimester.

However, my own arguments are no more logical than anyone else's. They all depend upon guesswork.

[pikatore]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Just like I don't agree with fighting, but someone has a right to defend themselves if their life is threatened.

Funny how you've managed to turn around almost full circle in presenting an analogy like that.

Well, at the end of the day, you can think what you like, but what's important is that you've realised that the choice isn't yours to make.

[ZNFYRH]

I haven't "realized" anything.

I never expected the choice to be mine to make.

We you trying to imply my opinion about legality?

In that case, no one should ever tell the mother what to do with her body. It's her choice.

pikatore, you seem to like assuming and concluding things based on statements. I thought I made it clear that I support the mother's choice.

[Captain Chaos]

I, on the other hand, do support limiting her choice.

By the end of the first trimester, she has had enough time to choose an abortion. After that, we need to bear in mind the child's life as well.

[pikatore]

[quote=ZNFYRH;364710]I haven't "realized" anything.

Right.

Quote by: ZNFYRH I never expected the choice to be mine to make.

The way you've been talking, I beg to differ.

Quote by: ZNFYRH We you trying to imply my opinion about legality?

?

Quote by: ZNFYRH In that case, no one should ever tell the mother what to do with her body. It's her choice.

good, thats all i care about.

Quote by: ZNFYRH pikatore, you seem to like assuming and concluding things based on statements. I thought I made it clear that I support the mother's choice.

You didn't. But now, i know.

[Marilyn Monroe]

Quote by: Captain Chaos I don't mean my argument from a legal perspective. I mean, when I press prochoice types on this issue, that is how they wind up justifying killing a new embryo or fetus.

I understand what you are saying now, and thank you! Was just using you as an example. There has to be some choice for the mother in the matter, because the embryo is a part of her body, it takes her nourishment, it pushes her organs aside as it grows, it goes to the bathroom through her. Women have to have some control over this. It is a beautiful thing when you want a child, but when you don't it's ugly. Men can talk about it, but until they've experienced it, it's a different thing. The feeling of being sick everyday at the beginning. It feels like you're going to die.

Abortion wasn't really frowned upon till the middle or later 1800's, so even though religion was very important, it didn't take a stand till then. I think that's highly curious. Even Pope's had taken a quickening stand earlier on.

I think it's a human life, and that human life is a beautiful, wonderful thing, but the mother has to have a choice. This is the nature of life.

[fushigi]

Quote by: Marilyn Monroe Men can talk about it, but until they've experienced it, it's a different thing. The feeling of being sick everyday at the beginning. It feels like you're going to die.

I love this argument, like because men can't actually experience pregnancy we should have no voice on the matter. That's like saying you can't take a stand against capital punishment unless you've ever been executed.

[livefree]

So much "concern" for the "life of the unborn", yet so little concern for the lives of the real people in poor countries. So much hypocrisy. It is obvious that for many of you who want to limit a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy, this isn't about saving hypothetical "lives", but rather it is about your own severe sexual repression and your need to 'punish' women for having sex.

[Osborn F Enready]

... or could it be from the weak willed, and weak stomached, to stop what is in front of them while ignoring that which they know exists, but can't see?

[Marilyn Monroe]

Quote by: fushigi I love this argument, like because men can't actually experience pregnancy we should have no voice on the matter. That's like saying you can't take a stand against capital punishment unless you've ever been executed.

Men have no voice in the matter. It was ruled that way, at some point in the 80's, I believe.

I was referring to the bigger picture of women who have experienced many pregnancies, and no longer want any part of it. You have to have been there to a degree.

[fushigi]

Quote by: livefree So much "concern" for the "life of the unborn", yet so little concern for the lives of the real people in poor countries. So much hypocrisy. It is obvious that for many of you who want to limit a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy, this isn't about saving hypothetical "lives", but rather it is about your own severe sexual repression and your need to 'punish' women for having sex.

I don't want to "punish" anyone. Least of all, the organism that I believe is human from the moment a zygote is formed.

I believe women AND men should be responsible by using birth control if they don't want a child. And I believe that the state should encourage that responsibility by providing every means to prevent pregnancies. But I also believe that those who call it a woman's right to choose simply aren't considering that there IS life inside them that they DO kill when they have an abortion. In fact, I find it unbelievable - inhuman even - that we give more respect to the bodies of the dead than we do to the fetus that is alive inside a woman's uterus. It's simply barbarous - a thing from the past - which is why, as MM pointed out, it was legal in the 1800s (along with slavery, colonialism, war crimes, and so forth.)

[pikatore]

Quote by: fushigi In fact, I find it unbelievable - inhuman even - that we give more respect to the bodies of the dead than we do to the fetus that is alive inside a woman's uterus.

Excuse me, but our respect of the bodies of the dead is symbolic to revere the life they led, not the POTENTIAL LIFE THEY MAY HAVE.

[livefree]

Quote by: fushigi I don't want to "punish" anyone. Least of all, the organism that I believe is human from the moment a zygote is formed.

Is every zygote really 'a person'? Is not this assumption based on the rather strange medieval belief that God creates a brand new baby soul every time conception occurs and then throws it down into the womb to take its chances? With the proviso, in the Catholicism of the time, that if a 'baby soul' doesn't get to be born, baptized and hear the gospel, then it is condemned to an eternity in Limbo. Most of us today don't believe that God is the sort of demon who would punish 'baby souls' for something that someone else does. When you consider the fact that more than half of all successful egg/sperm hook-ups that come down the Fallopian tubes don't take hold in the uterus but rather are flushed out by the natural body processes, then this whole underlying presumption that God drops a 'person' in there at each and every moment of conception seems very improbable and unholy.

Quote by: fushigi I believe women AND men should be responsible by using birth control if they don't want a child. And I believe that the state should encourage that responsibility by providing every means to prevent pregnancies. But I also believe that those who call it a woman's right to choose simply aren't considering that there IS life inside them that they DO kill when they have an abortion. In fact, I find it unbelievable - inhuman even - that we give more respect to the bodies of the dead than we do to the fetus that is alive inside a woman's uterus. It's simply barbarous - a thing from the past - which is why, as MM pointed out, it was legal in the 1800s (along with slavery, colonialism, war crimes, and so forth.)

So, fushigi, are you spending your life and a significant percentage of your income helping the poor, starving children of the world? Thirty thousand children STARVE to DEATH each and every day of the year on planet Earth! What are you doing personally about that? If you aren't doing everything in your power to ease that suffering and death, then you are a flaming hypocrite when you lecture women about "respecting" the "life inside them". You are so very concerned about the potential human life in tiny clusters of cells that have no mind or nervous system, but you ignore the very real suffering of billions of third world humans who are already born and have developed personalities and the capacity to feel pain and know it. Like almost all of the anti-abortionists, you base your beliefs on superstitions and unexamined and very dubious assumptions. Your logic and grasp of history are also very lame. "War crimes" were not, in fact, "legal in the 1800s". Your attempt to conflate the fact that the Catholic Church, for over a thousand years, didn't have problem with first trimester abortions because they didn't believe that the soul had 'quickened' the body until that time, with the "slavery, colonialism, war crimes" of our "barbarous" past is both illogical and stupid.

[pikatore]

An excellent pro-abortion argument, livefree.

[fushigi]

Quote by: LF Is every zygote really 'a person'? Is not this assumption based on the rather strange medieval belief that God creates a brand new baby soul every time conception occurs and then throws it down into the womb to take its chances?

I didn't say anything about a soul. I don't believe in souls.

Quote by: LF When you consider the fact that more than half of all successful egg/sperm hook-ups that come down the Fallopian tubes don't take hold in the uterus but rather are flushed out by the natural body processes, then this whole underlying presumption that God drops a 'person' in there

And I didn't say anything about God.

Furthermore, you only make my argument stronger when you point out the difficulty of a fetus reaching maturity. To kill it despite the fact that it's beat the odds to survive that long makes it all the sadder.

[fushigi]

And yes, I should do more to help the less fortunate in the world.

But let me turn the question around on you. Do you actively work to fight against all the things you believe are wrong? If not, do you still feel that you have reason to argue against them?

Quote by: LF Your attempt to conflate the fact that the Catholic Church, for over a thousand years, didn't have problem with first trimester abortions because they didn't believe that the soul had 'quickened' the body until that time, with the "slavery, colonialism, war crimes" of our "barbarous" past is both illogical and stupid.

Is it? Those others are all part of previous beliefs that we no longer subscribe to. They're all beliefs that killed. The belief that fetuses aren't people and therefore cannot be murdered is, in my view, exactly the same.

It's just a matter of perspective.