Abortion violates the inalienable right to life.

[Ken Carman]

"It seems to me that people who are for choice use reasoning that supports them emotionally."

I've actually read and heard more of this from the Pro-Life side, but I would assume... like most controversies, it depends on your perspective. Most people believe they are the ones who are being rational and those they disagree with the ones arguing emotionally. I've never argued an issue yet where emotional arguments come from only one side.

For example, the way in which they keep trying to say in an indirect manner that you are not a human being until you are born. Even though there is very little physical change from right before birth to after birth.

My argument back is you've skewed the argument towards one end of the abortion spectrum. I'm actually for more regulation the further in the birthing process the fetus gets. Abortion just pre-birth should be pretty hard to obtain, mostly as in "life threatening." I would also counter that Pro-Life forces use very late abortion in an emotional manner as if that's all we're talking about.

My argument is a form or mass becomes a being with a heart beat. Thus the un-born is a living being, and to kill it is murder.

With that line of reasoning then we should kill ourselves because our bodies eject sperm and ova on a regular basis. They turn into the "mass" you are referring to. This is an argument about where to draw the line. We just disagree.

I think its because you have such a corrupt moral fiber that you must lie to yourself to live with yourself.

Chuckle. Now who's being "emotional?"

Also I have notice how strange it is when people say the child would have a poor life therefore it is ok to have abortions.

Yes, the reasoning may be weak, buit the question remains... who decides, the state or the individual. The fetus is unable to.


Actually, the fifth was written before we had as full a knowledge as we have now about the fetus, the growth process... BTW, abortion wasn't illegal back then. Simply put, if our forefathers had known as much as we know now... maybe, maybe not.

[Kamehameha34]

I have a feeling we are just splitting hairs here.

We are.

But it is false to say that "No US citizen is guaranteed the legal right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness" because that is equivalent to saying that no US citizen has any of those rights. It doesn't matter that one of the phrases was taken out of the DOI, we could replace "pursuit of happiness" with "rabbit pornography" for all of the difference it would make, semantically.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: Kamehameha34 We are. But it is false to say that "No US citizen is guaranteed the legal right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness" because that is equivalent to saying that no US citizen has any of those rights. It doesn't matter that one of the phrases was taken out of the DOI, we could replace "pursuit of happiness" with "rabbit pornography" for all of the difference it would make, semantically.

I think this would be true if every one in the USA could remember that the guarantee is only in a philosophical sense.
It's not as if someone can go to court and give a case for pursuing there right to watch rabbits screw around.
But then having watched Boston Legal I may be wrong.

[big_lefty]

Quote by: Whatssnew My point was brain activity is not relevant to the question of what is murder. For your point on the analogy, it would be more like removing someone from life support that has a forseeable strong recovery. In effect killing a viable life, not a vegitable with little to no chance of survival.

Future potential for brain activity does not determine personhood. Current brain activity does. Anyone on life support who has a chance for recovery has current brain activity, so your analogy does not work. A fetus under about 24 weeks gestation is comparable to a brain dead patient, who can be legally terminated.

[Kamehameha34]

I think this would be true if every one in the USA could remember that the guarantee is only in a philosophical sense. It's not as if someone can go to court and give a case for pursuing there right to watch rabbits screw around.

Fundamental rights in the constitution can very much be defended in court.

Many cases regarding an individual's enumerated rights have gone to the supreme court.

[Morality Games]

Quote by: big_lefty Future potential for brain activity does not determine personhood. Current brain activity does. Anyone on life support who has a chance for recovery has current brain activity, so your analogy does not work. A fetus under about 24 weeks gestation is comparable to a brain dead patient, who can be legally terminated.

Quoted for truth.

[Whatssnew]

Ken Carmen: Good points, emotions are very hard to avoid, and point of view is very hard to get away from. I am trying my best to avoid emotions, but I suppose they are involved where I have failed to explain my point of view where I cant think of another way to explain it. The moral fiber bit, not emotional, just what I think I see. People will often defend the beliefs they were raised with by simply refusing to listen to any other point of view. I was raised with Rep. and Dem. points of view, and my way of diving into something hard to understand is to strike nerves and see what the reaction is. (Is the reaction reactionary to the cause, or to there feelings?)

With that line of reasoning then we should kill ourselves because our bodies eject sperm and ova on a regular basis. They turn into the "mass" you are referring to. This is an argument about where to draw the line. We just disagree.

The above mentioned is mass wich could bring life, my point was once you have brought human "life" into existance you don't have the right to extinguish it. What you have mentioned is the ability to create live not being used.

I think this my be a better analogy than what I have been using: When does a vehicle become a vehicle? (Form become being.) I say when it has an engine, (heart) otherwise it is not a vehicle (or not living.) A bike is no more a vehicle than a wheelbarrow or a cart untill it has a driving force like a person or engin.

[Kamehameha34]

The above mentioned is mass wich could bring life, my point was once you have brought human "life" into existance you don't have the right to extinguish it. What you have mentioned is the ability to create live not being used.

Do you not see that this very same logic applies wherever you draw the line for 'creation of life'?

Your opponents clearly define the creation of life as an event that takes place long after fertilization.

[Piscean]

Abortion may be sad and ugly but an even more overpopulated planet will ruin us even faster.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Technosoul An inalienable right to life is something granted to citizens of the USA by our Consitution.

Still preaching the same ole lies I see, and you still haven't learned the first thing about the constitution in all this time.

You claim:

Quote by: Technosoul I always lump the Consitution and the Bill of Rights together, as well as the declaration of independance.

This is clear evidence that you don't know jack about any of them. If you refer to the Declaration of Independence, you will se that it says that that ALL MEN are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. I don't see anyting at all in there about US citizens.

Quote by: Technosoul To become a citizen you must first get a birth certificate. Being that an unborn cannot obtain a birth certificate until they are in fact born, they have no bases to claim that right.

Have you ever read the 14th amendment? Do you have any idea of what it says, or what those words mean? Do you believe that you can go about killing illegal aliens without legal consequence because they are not citizens? One does not have to be a citizen of the US to have one's right to live protected here. Let me explain the 14th amendment to you.

Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

You may or may not have noticed that the amendment is written in two sentences. There is a reason for that.

At the time the amendment was added, states were in charge of citizenship, not the federal government and as such, people were first and foremost, a citizen of their particular state and second a citizen of the US. There were several states that were denying their citizens ther basic human rights on this basis. (slavery) The first sentence (in dark blue) establishes that we are first and foremost citizens of the US and secondarily citizens of our state and since we are primarily citizens of the US, our rights are protected by the constitution.

Clearly the first sentence states that only persons born or naturalized are citizens but one doesn't have to be a citizen in order to enjoy the protections of the 14th amendment as I will explain.

The second sentence is written in three clauses. There is a reason for this.The first clause is to enhance and punctuate the first sentence. It states clearly that no state law can override the rights protected by the constitution.

Did you notice that the clauses are separated with semicolons ( instead of commas (,)? Do you recognize the signifigance of semicolons vs commas. Maybe I better explain that to you as well since it is clear that you haven't seriously considered the language or punctuation used in the Constitution. One must understand the punctuation used in order to grasp what the writers are saying. A semicolon used to indicate a major division in a sentence where a more distinct separation is felt between clauses or items on a list than is indicated by a comma, as between the two clauses of a compound sentence.

The second clause states that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. This clause states that no person shal be deprived of life, liberty, property without due process, not "no citizen". The first clause points out and states that citizens have certain privledges and immunities attatched to their citizenship where as the second states that NO PERSON shall be deprived of life liberty or property.

This theory was first tested in the case of Yick Wo v Hopkins in 1876. The court clearly stated that "The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens."

There are numerous cases after this one that affirmed this fact. If you need to see them, I can look some of them up for you.

Finally, the third clause. "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Tell me that you aren't aware of the EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE. This is it. It is why you can't kill, rape, beat, or steal from non citizens. Stated simply, one doesn't have to be a citizen of the US for one's right to live to be protected in the US or be born in the US in order to be considered a person under the constitution.

If you are going to be involved in a discussion, and particularly one that involves the constitution, you really should know what it means.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: MplsBison Here's how I look at it: can the baby survive outside the mother's womb using current technology? IE, with current technology, a premature birth can survive at something like 6 months? I don't know off the top of my head. If it can, then there is no ethical basis for abortion. If it can't, then there is. Perhaps one day technology will advance to the point where an entire pregnancy can take place in an artificial womb, rendering abortion obsolete.

Following that terribly flawed line of logic, anyone who requires life support can be denied their right to live ethically be killed.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Technosoul I think it should not be called "a right to life" but rather a "right to be born". I think each child has the right to be born into an environment where it's needs are met. A place where it can get attention from a mother, where it does not have to live in poverty, in a place where it is not unwanted or where the mother is not seen as a whore by some local church. The right to live means it has what it needs to live a decent life as an infant. You should first worry about what happens to the baby after it is born. First end poverty. Get a decent healthcare system for all children and mothers. Fix the horrible adoption and foster care system. If you ban abortion and dump a new born into a drug invested poverty zone, you might as well toss it into a trash can. So go and fix it so we have a decent place for the new-borns to come into. After that we can talk about changing the law.

So, anyone who won't be born into an environment of sunshine and rainbows should be summarily executed. Is that your proposition? If your logic is valid, and the right to live is based on how happy you are, then it would be far better to go about killing those who we know beyond any doubt are living unhappy, unproductive lives rather than those who "might" live unhappy and unproductive lives.

Sometimes the shallowness of the logic that pro choicers use startles me. Do you ever actually think about the arguments you put forth?

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Kamehameha34 Fact is, until the baby can survive outside of the mothers womb, it is considered a part of the mother - not an individual.

The "fact" is nothing of the sort. That may be what you tell yourself, but don't try and pass it off as fact.

"[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote marks the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), 2-18.The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed.

This is one of a quite extensive bibliography that I have amassed from medical textbooks on the subjects of embryology, fetology, and OB/Gyn and peer reviewed medical journals. To date, I have found no credible science that states that the unborn is ever considered to be a part of its mother. If you can produce some credible science that states that the child is a part of its mother, I would be interested in seeing it. Untill such time as you can, however, you really shoud refrain from posting such nonsense as fact.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: Ken Carman And, of course, there have been qualifiers regarding children. Is a fetus considered a citizen in the full sense of the word? Um, I suspect... not.

The right to live is not one that can be claimed only by citizens of this country. Non citizens and illegal aliens have their right to live protected here. They may not have the rights associated with citizenship, but the right to live is not one of those.

[Pale RIder]

Quote by: big_lefty Future potential for brain activity does not determine personhood. Current brain activity does. Anyone on life support who has a chance for recovery has current brain activity, so your analogy does not work. A fetus under about 24 weeks gestation is comparable to a brain dead patient, who can be legally terminated.

It is possible to rationally answer the question of what is a person because we are persons and everyone around us are persons. It is possible to critically examinethe prsons we see every day and determine whether a suggested definition of person adequately describes us.

If you look critically at some of the definitions of person that are advanced by the pro choice side of the argument, it is obviousthat most can be set aside right away without discussion because they simply do not mesh with our own experience of what being a person is or they are simply not applicable to the question of what it is to be a person.

First, we don't "get to be" persons because we begin to produce brain waves, become autonomous, or independent, or even viable. These characteristics can be dismissed out of hand as not being essential characteristics of personhood because we all know someone or of someone who lacks some or all of these characteristics to some degree or another. In fact, we all lack them to some degree or another. You may have to be viable to stay alive, for example but viability doesn't tell us anything at all about what it is that is staying alive and if you are going to argue, it is imperative that any prerequisite you care to demand must speak to the subject of the discussion.

Nearly all of the most popular definitions of personhood suggested by the pro choice side of the argument break down in principle, it must be clear to any critical thinker that it follows that they will also break down in practice. Failure to admit this disqualifies one as a critical thinker and identifies one as an emotionalist. If we try to draw a line and say "beyond this point we are persons" we find rather quickly that there is no bright line in which we can say after this line we have characteristics X, Y, and Z but before this line we didn't. Unless of course, you want to limit yourself to some very arbitrary and superfical physical characteristics at which time, you enter the realm of the biological sciences and it seems that you want to argue philosophy to avoid the superior scientific argument do you not?

In attempting to set a time in which we "aquire" personhood, the pro choice side immediately enters the realm of logical fallacy. You must "beg the question". You must first assume that this aquisition of personhood happens at a time far enough along in the pregnancy so that abortion becomes a rational action and then try to construct an argument that proves whichever time you have arbitrarily set. This is a terribly flawed form of reasoning in either the scientific or philosophical realms. The failure of the application of this rational tells us that we must first try and find the definition of personhood and then determine whether it is a thing that we aquire or not.

We often hear argument for brain or thinking. OK, lets go there. The potenital for reason and rational thought is a matter of kind. We either have it or we don't. Realization of reason and rational thought is always a matter of degree and we all realize it to different degrees and none of us reach the absolute limit of our potential. Agreed?

Working within that framework then, the work of being a "person" is not an issue of degree but of kind. Do you understand the difference between degree and kind? The sort of person you are is a matter of degree while what you are is a matter of kind. It is quite possible for you to be a better or worse person than someone else. You can be more or less ethical, or honest, but you simply can not be more of a person than someone else. To suggest so is nonsense.

The demand for some sort of actualization that the pro choice side argues for is based on the acknowledgemen that the potenital for reason and rational thought is already there in each individual regardless of age. The pro choice side attempts to treat this as irrelavent, but if one is attempting to make a rational argument, then it simply must be acknowledged that we are all the same kind of entity as the unborn and that the adult is no more and no less than a grown up unborn. The pro choice side may argue that they are only asking that we all agree on some "reasonable" minimum qualification for personhood, but once again, in principle this demand breaks down.

The first sign of breakdown in principle is obvious on its face. The problem of having to name the degree of potential that must be achieved in order to be a person. Look about you among the various pro choicers. There simply is no agreement even among those on your side. The passion with which you hold your conviction is not a substitute for a rational explanation of why you may choose one point and another pro choicer may choose another. It also fails as reasonable substitute for a rational argument that higher and higher standards for personhood be met, even among post natals.

Then there are those who attempt to avoid the inevetable arguments by engaging the question of realizing potential as a sort of ticket to personhood. That is to say that they argue that we must reach a certain level in order to be considered a person, but once we are there, injury or illness that might bring us below that level will not "un-person" us. In this manner, they attempt to restrict the debate to those who are yet to be born. Again, to a critical thinker, this line of reasoning fails in that it attempts to change degree into kind but doesn't allow kind to be changed back to degree.

This line of thinking ignores what is required to be a person and focuses instead on what is required to "get to be" a person. This is a dead end because even if you conceed that more is required to get to be a person than is required to remain a person then we are necessarily brought back to what is to be required to remain a person after one has achieved personhood. Such arguments would fail to oppose infantacide in a great many cases and would fail to oppose killing of older individuals in just as many cases.

The logic in introducing degree into the definition of person rather than kind is simply flawed. Our rights are founded on the kind of being that we are, not the degree to which we achieve our potential. The extent to which we are different from each other in degree is not the source of our rights. It is nothing more than evidence of differences in our ability to exercise our rights and we all know that there is no requirement to exercise a right in order to have it none the less.

If the philosophical concept of what is a person refers to anything at all, it refers to something that doesn't need to be proven over and over. The essence of the person is something that is inbred. It is not something that we aquire somewhere along the line. Things that are aquired can be lost and may or may not be regained again. The fact that you are a person and can not lose that personhood no matter what may befall you is evidence that it is not an aquisition that you can lose. It is simply what you are.

It simply isn't rational to argue that non persons change into persons. To make such an argument is to argue that we undergo a radical and essential change in our natures during the span of our lives.

The problem with that thinking is that if the change is inevetable from the time we are concieved if given time then the change is not a change in our essential nature. If we initiate the change from within ourselves then it must be in our nature from the beginning and any changes in characteristics like independence, or where we live, or the amount of physical development we have achieved or how much mental capacity we have later in our lives is nothing more than a manifestation of what we were at the beginning of our life.