Do Rape Victims Have Too Many Rights?

Edit: Sorry, seems disqus duplicated my message. Wish web users didn’t lose the right to delete their own posts.

Where does “free will” come into play with all this crap? Certainly not with rape, and yet again, no free will for fetus hosts regardless of how they became pregnant?

If god forms rape fetuses in the womb as christian anti-choicers like to claim, if he knows them before they are conceived, then he basically planned for them to be conceived by violating a woman’s body and mind in a most traumatic and lasting manner, which makes him one. sick. puppy.

Since we’re working with hypotheticals…

I’m not usually one to try to police what people should or shouldn’t be allowed to identify as but being anti-choice AND a feminist are just…not compatible. You cannot be an advocate for women’s rights without fighting for our right to choose as well. 

How about we just all agree that the Catholic Church doesn’t get to speak publicly on Women’s health issues until 45 percent of the College of Cardinals is made up of women.  Once they make that progress, then I’ll listen to what they have to say on the matter.  Until then, their ideas on the matter are dead to me.

Yeah, why stop there? What about women who lock their doors at night, thereby preventing potential rape-resulting pregnancies? And self-defense classes for women, which might likewise prevent precious life?

There are cases of people who have had their corpus callosum severed, who when asked in one ear if they believe in God, will say ‘yes’ on one side and ‘no’ on the other.  Can half a soul be saved while the other half damned?

(typo in the article’s title)

 The error in your thinking is that this fictional 45% of Cardinals would support women’s reproductive rights to any significant degree.

That’s right – had Rebecca Kiessling’s mother locked her door, that would have been equivalent to giving Rebecca the death penalty.

Ban locked doors! The carnage must stop!

 Why not? He’s done it at least once before, and it’s documented.

Spot on, Hannah! Well said

anyone of us could have been cut short before we were born for whatever reason. her photo and rhetoric fail to move me in the slightest. its not like our souls are hanging around the universe with a number and an application, looking down on planet earth and saying “gosh, i hope someone has me soon.” like hannah says, if she hadnt been born she wouldnt have known it.  i sure wouldnt want some baby that was a product of rape. she cant convince me that her mother didnt resent her at least a little bit when she was born.

Oh the spelling and grammar errors. I really shouldn’t post before coffee.

No surprise there because Christianity is an inherently selfish religion

I’m curious to know when atheists believe life begins and should be afforded some protection by the law. 

Why aren’t Messianic Jews real Jews?  Honest question.

Ya, & U speld “squirrel” rong.  Gramer knotseez suk.

What if my parents used a condom on Mother’s Day 1983?

And what´s worse, to give birth to himself.
Fortunately, he let himself be killed later in sacrifice to himself.

How many babies come from affairs? should we go all out advocating infidelity because of the mass number of glorious souls who don’t exist simply because we aren’t brave enough to cheat and have sex with strangers every night? and what about Aliens? they use the human body to incubate their babies and that seems pretty gross.. but really the baby of a rapist growing inside me would feel like the seed of the devil – a dirty left over remnant of a monster growing inside me – we have 8 billion people on a planet that supports 3 billion and each of us is amazing and special the trillions that didn’t make it would have been special too but there is always going to be an excessive abundance until disease or war culls the herd – imagining the ones who didn’t make it is wasting your life imaging if you’d chosen to be a fireman or doctor or plumber or stripper …life is and then isn’t and the energy continues on…. let’s not ruin the lives of the living by imposing our values, and beliefs onto their choices in the form of laws.. if you do just remember one day those choice laws will be aimed at you.

  Under the assumption that heaven and hell exist, abortions would be a good thing wouldn’t they? The “baby’s soul” would have not sinned, therefore would go to heaven, and the doctor was a sinner anyway, so he would go to hell. The mother is most likely getting an abortion due to premarital sex, so she’s a sinner anyway. So why don’t pro-life supporters  approve of adoption? It kills three birds with one stone. 
  I suppose that it’s the potential for life to exist, and that person’s life. I mean, what a wrench would have been thrown into god’s divine plan if some tyrannical mass-murderer or psychopath had been aborted!! 
  There are a few holes in that logic, but if you believe that an all mighty Being loves you, but will throw you into a fiery pit to burn for eternity if you do not follow his every whim, it should go over fine with you… 

If my mom hadn’t had a miscarriage- otherwise known as a spontaneous abortion- I wouldn’t be here.. the death of my proto-sibling led to my conception…

Luckily, this only applies to men.  Women waste nothing on masturbation.

Hold on. Roe vs Wade was a case in which Roe falsely accused Wade of rape because if she had been raped she could get an abortion legally whereas if she’d had consensual sex then she couldn’t. The case changed abortion law because it proved that men were being falsely accused of rape because of the prohibition of abortion for non-rape pregnancies.

So how was it that Rebecca’s mother, as a rape victim, didn’t have access to legal abortion?

Fixed! Thanks!

Just to offer another opinion on that hypothetical situation (the criminal terminating the fetus), I do think that is also covered somewhat simply by the idea of what “pro-choice” means. It should be a woman’s right to choose whether to let that zygote develop over nine months into a human being or not, so someone who deprives a woman of that fundamental right to choice should be charged with a crime for that as well. That’s my opinion on it, anyway. What do you think? Hopefully its not too OT.

 Re: my comment above: “But to me, the idea that through the various stages of
gestation, the ability for this developing human lacks the cognitive faculties
to feel pain and know their existence, is a flawed argument. ”

I’m not saying that a group of cells knows it exists and can feel pain.  I’m just saying that using that as an argument is flawed.  Ultimately, that group of cells becomes a human.

Why does everyone assume the following two things these days:
1)Everyone who disagrees with abortion is a theist
2)All atheists are pro-choice

Its not as black and white as that, there are many valid secular arguments that can be made for both positions, so stop treating it like its not a moral issue. Many people, myself included don’t believe in inalienable Kantian rights, and think that things like the morality of abortion don’t have a clear cut right answer. To talk as if pro-choice arguments are the only ones with any merit or the only ones worthy of consideration is both patronising and factually wrong.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get people to believe you that you’ve been raped? Do you have any idea of the kind of harassment women are subjected to by police, and how frequently they are disbelieved?

(And, according to the Roe v. Wade Wikipedia page, that was apparently only applicable to the defendant’s situation in Texas; it may not have applied wherever Kissling’s mother was.)

csteelatgburg: “ I’m curious to know when atheists believe life begins and should be afforded some protection by the law. ”
.
I’m curious to know why you didn’t inform yourself on the basic issues before sharing your ignorance with the world.
.
Do you think all life is sacred? Do you eat plants and/or animals? Conflict!
.
Or perhaps it is human life you are concerned with. You probably care deeply about the fate of tumors.
.
“Life” is not the issue here. Life began at least 3 billion years ago, and has been going continuously since. Educate yourself on some basics so you can at least ask intelligent questions.

The implications of Kiessling’s stance are far-reaching. According to her, if I don’t go out and rape somebody tonight, I may be preventing a human life, and that would be a terrible thing. So I should be raping women every opportunity I have.

My being an athiest did not change my views on abortion. Those views changed well before I shed my religion. For me, I simply realized that, living or not, the fetus does not have a right to the mother’s body. Right to life is not absolute, and bodily autonomy trumps right to life every time. So, even if there is a fully grown adult who needs to use my body to survive (and can only use by body), I still have the right to say,”No, I don’t want you to use my body.”

What if my mom just had a headache that night?   Or became a nun instead of marrying?  What if Obama’s mom had done so…the country wouldn’t have a President right now.  Or would Biden be president?  Now I think *I* have a headache…

“Ultimately becomes a human” is a completely irrelevant argument.  Every egg I’ve ever ovulated could have become a human, but it WASN’T at the time.  And, no, sperm aren’t magic and they don’t transcendently confer “personhood” to previously merely biochemical ova.

Furthermore, where your argument utterly fails is that you have a shocking lack of respect for HUMAN RIGHTS.

The “right to life” NEVER, EVER includes the right to exploit someone else’s body without their consent.

I am a human being.  That means I owe my body to NO ONE.  Not to patients on the kidney transplant list who are definitely human, not to hemophiliacs needing platelets, not to ANYONE.  My body is mine and no one gets to use it without my consent. My past or present sexual choices do not invalidate my autonomy over my body, nor do I “owe” some mindless clump of cells access to my organs and nutrients just because I am a sexual being (like 99.99% of humans everywhere, ever).

If you can’t appreciate the vital necessity of consent and personal autonomy then you cannot possibly be a humanist.

I’m pro-choice. I don’t use the inability of the fetus to feel pain as an argument. My only argument is that bodily autonomy trumps right-to-life. You can’t force anybody to give their child a kidney to save their life. You can’t even force people to donate organs after they are dead (which I think is weird), so why should I be forced to donate my body to a fetus for nine months? If I choose to do that, great, but if I don’t want to be pregnant, then it’s my body and I can choose to not be pregnant. I don’t need to study the fetus’ brain activity or anything to make that decision either.

Why does no one ever go after the greatest abortionist of them all — God?  Seriously, until the later 20th century, infant mortality was a serous issue.  I have aunts and older cousins who lost children in childbirth.  Much less these days.  Premies, prenatal defects, malnutrition and spontaneous abortions have been significantly reduced by the works of man, thus thwarting God’s will that all those little babies should die. And what about all those third world babies that starve to death, and the infant infections, signifying that God apparently wants to see them in hell right away, and we in the west keep snatching them from His clutches with antibiotics and surgeries and such.  And the in vitro fertilization must really piss God off, flushing away all those excess zygote souls and forcing one to live and grow despite His omnipotent will that the man or woman did something really, really bad sometime (or an ancestor did), and they were being punished with infertility — presumably consigning all the woman’s eggs straight to hell.  Yes, that’s all our loving, caring, beneficent God — an abortionist.  But that’s okay — he’s got His reasons.

“there are many valid secular arguments that can be made for both positions, so stop treating it like its not a moral issue… To talk as if pro-choice arguments are the only ones with any merit or
the only ones worthy of consideration is both patronising and factually
wrong.”
.
I understand that there are a few atheists who are anti-choice, but I haven’t heard any good arguments from them. Feel free to lay some on us. Show us some anti-choice arguments that have merit. Telling us about the greatness of  the argument you’re not presenting is not going to impress us.
.
I did read one dipstick who insisted that “science says life begins at conception,” but curiously he never got around to explaining the science. Don’t blow smoke, and don’t expect us to accept things on authority.

I want to see a sperm give a lecture with the same title, “Did I deserve the death penalty?” in opposition to the genocide of masturbation and involuntary wet dreams.

Since others have been stretching the “what if” argument to absurd ends, I want to have some fun too.   By that insane logic, I am a murderer, a mass murderer no less, for every time I choose to forgo sex with my girlfriend or wife. How many of those missed chances would have ended up in a pregnancy?

For that matter, my daughter’s conscience should weigh heavily on her because after she was born her mother and I decided to be more careful and not get pregnant. Because of her untold human beings were never born. If we decided not to have sex the night that produced my daughter,  another person would have been born which in turn would have been responsible for other humans remaining unborn. If nothing else because of the inability to be pregnant during gestation.

See how insanely this argument can be stretched? Every action could result in people being born or not and we are not even talking about masturbation which according to this logic would be a genocide.

Where I come from we like to say that “If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bicycle”.

“If” arguments are puerile and meaningless. Maybe in the Multiverse every single possibility comes to fruition, but agonizing over them in a single universe is silly. Unfortunately there will be fools that will take her argument as valid because at first it sort of sounds as if it makes some sense. Only when one actually ponders it in a bit more depth (not too much, to be sure) one can see its innate silliness.

This argument deserves to be recognized as it’s own logical fallacy. I propose to call it the “Rebecca Kiessling Fallacy” as in “Stop using the Kiessling fallacy”.

“Ultimately, that embryo will develop into a human.”
.
You state that as a fact. Apparently you live in a world without spontaneous abortion (miscarriage). Since you don’t live in the same universe as the rest of us, why do you think your view is relevant to us?

And some of those cells become a fetal placenta.

Several billion years ago.

I frankly don’t understand the idea of “‘afford[ing] protection’ to the unborn” because in this context it only means “protecting the unborn” AT THE EXPENSE OF THE WOMAN. If you’re going to talk about protecting the unborn by making prenatal care free and widely available to women who seek it, great, but if you’re going to declare that a woman’s body is property of the state after a certain time in pregnancy (which is the only possible functional outcome of “‘afford[ing] protection’ to the unborn” and “state interest in protecting fetal life”), this is unacceptable.

While a fertilized egg is certainly different from a fully formed fetus, neither are entitled to exploit another human being’s body without zir consent, because no being is ever entitled to exploit another in such a way.

Now, the vast majority of women in the later stages of pregnancy WANT to be pregnant, so it is not really an issue except for those who have dangerous medical complications, heart-wrenching fetal diagnoses, chronic lack of access to timely medical care, and lots of other incredibly desperate situations that we cannot possibly begin to police, who are going to be the most hurt by the state prying into personal medical decisions in the later stages of pregnancy.

Not being created is not the same thing as being destroyed.  There seems to be a dogged confusion here regarding the distinction between “never have been” and “no longer being”.

There’s a quote running around from Mark Twain in which he says that death is nothing to be afraid of because he was dead for thousands of years before he was born and it never bothered him a bit.  I wonder if that quote is authentic.   Twain was smarter than that.  He was not dead before he was born.  He simply did not exist.  Death and destruction are not the absence of existence, they are the loss of it.

Another distinction often lost in these discussions is the nature of the thing abortion seeks to destroy.  The following is clipped from an article on stem cells…

*******

Supporters of embryonic stem cell research argue that at these
early stages we are not dealing with human beings, but with a cluster of undifferentiated
cells no larger than a period at the end of a sentence.

Typically, the embryos marked for destruction
are the so-called “surplus” from in vitro fertilization
efforts.

It is argued that they possess no
heartbeat and have no determinate sex.  Supporters
say the embryonic stem cell cluster is human, yes, but not a human being.  No one considers a cluster of human brain
cells to be a human being, so what is the difference?

The difference is the distinction between
growth and change.  The difference
between an ovum and an embryo is a substantial one of change.  That change in substance happens when the
nuclei of the sperm and the egg fuse into a new single nucleus.  The result is a new, genetically unique,
complete, and unified human being.  Ironically,
the stem cells themselves testify to the unity of a new human being in that while
they themselves are radically changing, they do so in a unified effort of
growth in behalf of the person.

The stem
cells change, but the unified person simply grows.  This is the same way in which the cartilage
in a two-year-old child’s skeleton changes to bone as the baby simply grows into
adulthood.  And just like the child and
the adult, so too are the embryo and child the same kind of thing.  The only differences between the embryo, the
child, and the adult are those of growth and maturation.

Some supporters deny the distinction between
growth and substantial change, essentially arguing that a four-day-old embryo
is not really a human being because we cannot see its humanity; it’s too small.  Or it is not a human being because it cannot develop
without a mother to provide its material need for a uterus and placenta.  Or that it must not be a human being because
it is slated for destruction anyway.

Yet
we justly condemn these arguments when applied to other types of people.  Bigots defended slavery by claiming an
inability to see humanity in an African. 
Reports of newborns left to die in garbage dumpsters do not compel us to
deny the humanity of these babies simply because they do not have a mother to
provide them with their material need for milk. 
And we naturally recoil in horror at claims of communist Chinese harvesting
vital organs from executed political prisoners. 
We recoil despite our knowing that the prisoners were slated for
destruction anyway.

*******

Once “the thing” becomes a blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus/whatever it is no longer simply a collection cells in the way that my hair is a collection of cells.  “The thing” is a complete, unified, organism.
 

As to the origin point of a human BEING”s rights to existence, I’m willing to compromise.  The compromise is Roe V. Wade.  I’m not willing to compromise further.  Third-trimester abortions are incredibly rare, and extremely important to have as an option.

I have the potential to become a heart-transplant donor at some point in the future.  Doesn’t necessarily mean I should be treated as one RIGHT NOW.

“Whether or not that human will be loved or cared for orhave a fair life, makes that a very difficult decision and I don’t have a concrete stance in that regard.”

What you´re saying there is basically that we don´t know if the unborn baby will have a good life, be a great person or the contrary, be a murderer, a jackass, or simply, be a regular, average person. That is uncertain. But if a pregnant woman is willing to do an abortion, I´d say she´s pretty much certain her life will be miserable if she keeps the baby. So,  I´ll go along with amycas in this one. You´re changing the certainty of a miserable life for a woman who will have to raise the child of someone who´s done a terrible deed to her, to the uncertainty of a good life to the baby. So I guess, the mother´s choice would prevail, considering she has a better critical thinking than someone who doesn´t even has a conscious yet. Her body freedom in this case is a bigger value than the baby´s life. And don´t tell me life should be always more valuable than anything, otherwise you would not be so condescending to death penalty there in the US.

 Technically, you are a serial murder for every time you forgo sex. You are a mass murderer for every time you masturbate. 😉

“Ultimately, that group of cells becomes a human.”

This is untrue for the half of all pregnancies that end in miscarriage. Maybe the prolife movement needs to figure out a way to prevent all miscarriages because they kill far more “babies” than abortion does.

” Once “the thing” becomes a blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus/whatever it is
no longer simply a collection cells in the way that my hair is a
collection of cells.  “The thing” is a complete, unified, organism.”

It is a complete, unified organism that is using my body to further its existence. I have a right to refuse its use of my body.

Bodily autonomy > right-to-life

If you don’t believe me, then go try to make a law that forces people to donate blood/plasma.

Thank you!

 Now that’s what I call compassion (not really).  At least we agree on what it is that you would destroy if you chose to exercise your full bodily autonomy.  That’s something.

 I often wish that I was never born, I mean, I’m fine with that. As it is, my mom didn’t think she was pregnant for around 5 months in because she didn’t think she could have anymore kids after my brother was born and she has other medical issues that can manifest with pregnant-like symptoms. She even told an x-ray technician that she wasn’t pregnant. She could have had a 2nd child on her schedule and I would have been missed, and I’m fine with that. I don’t have a great life, and even though there’s a lot of cool shit to see and do, I don’t bother to see and do a lot of it. What I never knew before wouldn’t be wonderful enough to will myself into being, or hurt me at all. I think this comes from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where not being born has an imaginary impact larger than it actually does. If some accident happens, it’s not like people are saying we should have had more children so one of them could avert it, so an angel can tell him his life means a lot more than he values it. Life with or without a certain person who is already alive can be different, but overall, not that much different than it is if you never met them; if you didn’t have your best friend because their parents decided to live hundreds of miles away, it’s not destined that you’ll be best friends somehow – you just have a different best friend.

One of your flaws is that just because something “can” become something, does not mean that it “is” that something.

An acorn will develop into a tree, but I bet if your neighborhood association had a ban on cutting down oak trees and a fine for it, you would be pissed if they  gave  you a ticket for raking up the acorns in your yard during the fall. 

You sound rather hysterical, a term that is etymologically very appropriate here.

This is an extremely gendered insult, and you should be ashamed of yourself for making it.  Standing up for my rights and the rights of other women is not “hysterical”–it is self-respect.

You lecture me on how I shouldn’t be telling others what to do, then immediately presume to instruct me on how (you believe) I should speak.

Criticizing speech (NOT restricting it!) is in no way the same as advocating cutting off access to medical care. You’re not just “telling others what to do”; you’re advocating FORCING others to do what you want.

Did I say “I dictate how everyone must think?” Did I claim to be the final arbiter of these questions? No and no.

Yes you did. You said you would “cut off” abortion with a “safety cushion” which clearly means you are talking about public policy and using the force of law to compel adherence to your preferences.  There is literally no other way to mean “safety cushion” than a policy provision.  How can you have a “safety cushion” on your own preferences? The idea is incoherent.

Of course women’s rights are to be strongly considered;

Women’s rights are not to be just “strongly considered.” The are to be INVIOLABLE, because human rights are inviolable.

I am pro-choice, and consider myself a feminist.

No on both counts. No one who is pro-choice could possibly talk about “cutting off” people’s access to medical care so callously, and no decent feminist would EVER shut down discussion by calling someone “hysterical.”

But the development of a fetus, leading to the birth of a child, is a complicated legal situation

No it isn’t.  I am a human being.  I do not cease to be a human being when I am pregnant.  As such, my body is, and continues to be, exclusively mine.

one for which most attitudes and laws were formed long before there was any degree of medical understanding and before women’s rights and opinions were seriously considered.

Tradition: just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly stupid.  See also: Antiquity, argument from.

Quite obviously, there is some point at which a fetus must be recognized as a new, separate individual;

Yes, and that is called birth, because that’s when the former fetus is, you know, actually a separate individual.

and how to balance that with women’s rights.

No. Women’s rights, like all human rights, do not get “balanced.”  They do not get compromised away with other concerns. A human right is, by definition, one that should not or cannot be balanced with anything else.

As I said, that’s not my decision to make, but my opinion as a member of the human community counts as much as others’.

Nope–human rights are not up to a vote.  If you don’t like my human rights, tough beans.

in a collaborative society, every person’s rights share frontiers with all others. That doesn’t make anyone more or less important.

So who else gets their body violated at the whim of the state, and who else has their personal medical decisions interfered with by the political process? Who else is obligated to have their bodies serve as life support for another person? “Sharing frontiers” with others’ rights DOES NOT mean that those others may trample an individual’s bodily autonomy.Like
Reply

Unfortunately, that is feminism. Feminism is one of those thing that, without an authoritative definition, includes every extreme view under its broad remit.

You’d think right-minded feminists would come up with a new term to define themselves that doesn’t cover the extremes. Maybe they will.

Whether or not a fetus counts as a human life doesn’t have anything to do with feminism.

I stand corrected.  I hastily posted that as “will” vs. “has the potential to”.  As far as my view being relevant to you is, I’m a human and a social creature who is interested in discussing ideas.  I apologize for bothering you.

Thank you Ibis3.  That helps a lot.  I retract my previous post.

So HOW exactly is my assessment of reality wrong?  WHAT exactly were the flaws in my argument? How is controlling my own body (and not, say, the universe) “playing god”? How is standing up for human rights “playing god”? How is the possibility that I may have medical care withheld from me anything OTHER than “violating my rights”?

Throwing around terms like “dictate reality” and “play god” without any valid argument is pretty weak, and doesn’t convince anyone.

Thank you.  Points very well taken. 

While it saddens me that you don’t seem to value your life much, I agree with your overall point. I hope that whatever it is that makes your life “not great” will change for the better though.

If that blood transfusion patient (or anyone for that matter) was invading my body and causing me pain I would sure as hell use whatever deadly force was necessary to remove that threat to my physical safety.

Who the hell are you to decide what the relationship between the mother and the unborn is? If she wants to be pregnant, she doesn’t need you lurching over her, and if she views the pregnancy as a parasite, she has every right to do what she wants to it. And if Mother Teresa thought she could “expect” people to have certain feelings in their most personal situations, then she was a pompous busybody.And Mother Teresa was also a disgusting charlatan who denied pain relief to desperate patients and unethically redirected funds away from medical care toward religious endeavors. I wouldn’t trust her any farther than I could throw her.

 This is why debate and discussion is useful.

I’m copy-pasta’ing this for reference and re-use for everytime in the future I have to go through this fight with people.

Well said!

That was, like, totally the LAST reply I was expecting!!

 Where?

You presume to tell me what I think, what I mean, what I am and am not;

You said something that had only one possible interpretation, and then you tried to weasel out of it.  By all means, if there is any other POSSIBLE interpretation of what you said, enlighten us.  You have also provided plenty of evidence as to what you are and are not, and you have not shown that I assessed it inaccurately.

arbitrarily declare what rights anyone has

Why don’t you try to actually make an argument for why the right to bodily autonomy isn’t fundamental?  Have you actually READ any of the major declarations on human rights? UN? Helsinki? Belmont?

and that they are illimitable by anyone else’s competing rights,

So, go ahead and provide ANY situation where someone’s “competing rights” gets to violate another human being’s bodily autonomy.  Go ahead. I double-dog dare you.

ignore any argument you find inconvenient;

Which argument did I ignore?  I addressed every single one of your points with direct quotations.

and seek to move the goalposts from determining the point of physical and legal independence to access to medical care.

I have consistently said the point of physical and legal independence is birth.  If you “cut off” access to abortion, you are ipso facto blocking access to medical care. This is not hard.

In short, you’re just as much of an irrational zealot as any religious fundamentalist,

Yeah, respecting human rights and observing the untold suffering of millions of women who have been denied them is exactly the same as believing in something because it’s in a 2,000-year-old book.  Duly noted.  Also, everything Tim Minchin says to Storm when she tries to pull this exact same bullshit.

Once again, you’re not the final authority on anything.

Actually, my argument comes from tons of precedent in human rights law and medical and research ethics–and, if you actually HAD a valid argument, you could make it, instead of whining about me not being “the final authority.”

But hey, if you really want to disparage anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity, feel free to alienate yourself.

Yeah, “don’t commandeer other people’s bodies” is suuuuch a high standard of “ideological purity”…give me a break!

 Why?  I’m not an argumentative person.  I’m an atheist and, despite what you say, a humanist.  I was only trying to suss out an inner dialogue I have been having with myself regarding the issue.  I posted the question as a means for getting other opinions on the subject because I was clearly suffering from some cognitive dissonance.  After hearing back from other members of the community I stand corrected and retract my initial statements.  Thank you to all those with well thought out and civil responses. 

 If by Yeah, I call B.S. on that.  It’s nothing more than sexist bigotry.  Every child killed by abortion had a father.   Men absolutely have a natural right to the discussion, and they have a legal right (in America at least) to participate in the process.  Your gynocentric bigotry notwithstanding.

Having a child is not merely an inconvenience. It changes lives and your body. Many people are not emotionally or financially able to support a child, but because you seem to think that the value of a clump of cells, are more valuable than an existing life you cannot see that.
What would you said to a woman with a health condition that meant she could deliver a healthy baby, but would most likely die in the process? Do it, because that child is a human life, and they should be given the chance to live at the expense of yours?
What about a child that would be born with a debilitating genetic condition?
What about drug addicts who are unwilling to receive care? Should they be forced to parent a child, which will quite possible be born an addict ?

 It’s not that I do or don’t value my life, it just hasn’t always been so great that I’d do it over again, and I think people make too much about dying with regrets. I don’t feel obligated to make the world a better place (or a worse place), and I’ve gotten over the fact that I’m going to die someday not having done stuff that would have been fun. It’s not like I can flip through the photo album of my life once I’m dead, and say, yeah, that was a good day, I’m glad I did that. Similarly, if you’re not born, you’re not looking forward to anything. You could live your life and say, for better or worse, I’m glad for everything the way it was, or you could wish to change things, but accept that you can’t. Every stupid bump in the road is an opportunity to be a better person than if you were never challenged – I think it’s a crock. Many a bitter person was built on the bumpy road to nowhere. And you could say, “well, I’m glad I’m not one of those bitter people,” makes the time pass more pleasantly, maybe. It’s still not necessarily worth being born if you could have avoided it altogether, and as long as you were born, you deal with it. And when I say “you” I mean a general “you” more specific to “me,” but certainly applicable to other people. I know it sounds grim, but I don’t even see it as grim. It’s more neutral than grim, as opposed to squeezing the juices out of life and filled with glorious positivity and ego that life is too wonderful. I am more the kind of atheist Christians are always saying are sullen and life is meaningless, I don’t have a sullen way about it, but I do think it’s true. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a lot of good times and appreciation. But the sort of appreciation one might have for a parent who decided not to abort them, or to put them up for adoption instead of abort them, is like, if they did abort you and you couldn’t appreciate life, you wouldn’t be that mad.

People who believe these fetuses are looking down from heaven and haunting their mothers, are like, hell, I missed making that woman’s life a total chore and stealing food from her. I sure would have liked to jump out of a plane one day, but she screwed me out of my opportunity.

The size of the “fetus” is irrelivant Rich,when a child is outside of the womb or inside its still a child.Using sceince and reason proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that what is concieved is the same as what is born. With the Atheist mantra of reason and sceince,they should be on the frount line of pro-life action.

I do think that you have a right to the discussion and to weigh in.  But with these sort of issues, esp regarding rape issues.   I just think the actual litigating and law making needs to be done by a committe of women.  It may seem sexist and it is unfair to some  men but when compared to how unfair things have been thoughout history…..I think it balamces out.  A male majority should not be allowed to litigate this type of womens issue in my opinion.

I thought it was a TED talk by Vilayanur Ramachandran, but I can’t find that in the ones I see, but I did find this:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=9433

Bullshit.  I have a say in this fight now.  Anyone who thinks I don’t by virtue of my being a man can pack off.

 “I’m pro-choice, but I wonder about the logic of the anti-abortion folks
who would carve out an exception for rape or incest. If your argument
against abortion is that life begins at conception, then what difference
does it make how you were conceived? ”

Jim, I’m pro-life, or if you prefer, anti-abortion, and I agree with your observation here.

You’d think right-minded feminists would come up with a new term to define themselves that doesn’t cover the extremes. Maybe they will.

You mean like Republicans?
or Christians?
or Libertarians?

most groups in existence have this issue.

That might begin to make sense if not for the fact that the overwhelming majority of anti-choice people are pro-war and pro-death penalty.   They don’t care how many innocent men, women and children are bombed to death overseas, nor do they care how many wrongly convicted individuals die in gas chambers or lethal injection chambers.   But they love guilt-tripping women over embryos and fetuses. 

Ultimately, that embryo will develop into a human.

You do realize that the specific language you use here (“will develop into”) suggests that an embryo, in its present state isn’t a human?

I don’t think that that was your point, but your comment clearly suggests that embryos are different than babies or indepedent human beings ~ and on that point, you’re right……

embryos can develop into babies/independent human beings, but until they develop to that stage, they aren’t those things.

I have no problem with the suggestion that when a brain is formed and a heart is beating, that is different than a mere ‘clump of cells’ ~ it’s the suggestion that a zygote or blastocyst that’s a couple of weeks should be considered a full ‘human being’ that’s problematic, imo.

Where I come from we like to say that “If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bicycle”.
“If” arguments are puerile and meaningless. Maybe in the Multiverse every single possibility comes to fruition, but agonizing over them in a single universe is silly. Unfortunately there will be fools that will take her argument as valid because at first it sort of sounds as if it makes some sense. Only when one actually ponders it in a bit more depth (not too much, to be sure) one can see its innate silliness.

Great post, Marco, you nailed it 🙂

Thank you for listening and being willing to change your mind (or work out your own position with some external input). It’s rare to find and makes all the effort worth it.

Once “the thing” becomes a blastocyst/zygote/embryo/fetus/whatever it is no longer simply a collection cells in the way that my hair is a collection of cells. “The thing” is a complete. unified organism.

 
‘Complete’ only in terms of things needed for it to potentially become a baby/independent human being.
 
But it’s not truly ‘complete’ until it has developed into a baby/independent human being.  That’s precisely why there are terms for different stages.
 
A zygote/blastocyst could become a baby/independent human being, but unless it does, it’s NOT a baby/independent human being.
 
This is precisely what  Marco hit on the head with his  “if my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bicycle” comment a few posts back.
 

I, actually, don’t agree. These questions can be difficult to wade through, and having someone explain a different side to an issue in a rational, reasoned way can be helpful. 

Finding someone who listens to that other side, let alone says “wow, that was a relevant, intelligent argument with points I hadn’t thought of, and it totally changed my mind” is fantastic, IMHO. I, certainly, am no expert on every issue. It’s refreshing that someone can consider something and change their position if warranted. 

Given that, in general, most of us would like more people to be atheists, would like more people to stop and think about human rights, and would like more people to be open to intelligent dialogue, I would rather see encouragement  to discuss and consider.

You know what we call it when a person’s bodily autonomy is involuntarily subsumed by the will and needs of another? Slavery. I’d disparage anyone who advocates that. And to oppose it isn’t “hysterical,” “irrational,” or “scream[ing] and rag[ing]”.

Yes, because the whole question rests on appearance. Thick.

1) A fetus is not yet a “human” in any moral sense, any more than my tonsils are.

2) The right to life NEVER includes the right to use another person’s body without consent.  Case closed.

 Your right Nordog these people are just spermdonist!

Do you think it’s possible Nordog is doing a Poe of an MRA idiot?

According to Kiessling, abortion was illegal even in cases of rape in Michigan, where her mother lived.

Right to life is not absolute.  Hmmm.  A popular view about 80 years or so ago.  Glad to see fads always come back around.  Yeeek. 

You are so right and i agree with you 100%.We all think we are right until are able to see things from someone elses perspective.

“The thing” is a complete, unified, organism.”  So is Guardia Lambula, it doesn’t mean people should be forced to host it.

1)not according to sceince and reason.                                        2)no one is using anyones body without thier  concent

“At that conference was a gentleman whose mother was raped and made the choice to keep the baby and give him up for adoption once he was born. ”

That’s right, *she* made the choice.  She didn’t have it imposed on her by moralizing busybodies who decided they knew better than she what was right for her, her body and her life.

 there you have what? MT’s idiot statement?

Considering the profligate way we waste human lives after birth on religious wars, wars for oil, racial wars and for just plain money, these arguments for the sanctity of fetal life are ludicrous.  Once the baby is born there is no end to its exploitation, abuse and victimization through adulthood to eventual death, and fundies are ready to kill for a blob of cells?

Actually, I am not pro-abortion by any means, but I do acknowledge the indifferent facts of life that a woman has a right to expel a parasite from her own body.  I don’t like the process, or the philosophical questions this raises, but I’m also not comfortable with the whole idea that life in general requires the death of lesser organisms for sustenance.  Just cause I don’t like something doesn’t change the reality of life, or the fact that a fetus incapable of surviving outside the host (with or without artificial support is a tricky question here) is something short of truly “alive.”  Still, if an insurance company decides that life support for preemies is an experimental procedure and won’t cover it, will the anti-abortionists push for an arrest of the CEO?  And for those without insurance, whose child dies from a lack of prenatal care, do we prosecute them?  Or the doctors and hospitals that will not offer free prenatal care to those in need? After all, I thought this was a moral issue, not financial.  Why is the pressure always on the woman facing the tough decision?  Could it be she is an easy target to shame and pressure, while insurance companies that don’t care are simply invulnerable?

When I see more drug rehabs, affordable daycare, churches housing the homeless instead of sitting empty 90+%  of the time, and executives ashamed of their multi-million dollar salaries at the expense of firing thousands of employees, I will listen to the anti-abortion rhetoric.  Until then, it’s just a lot of political blather targeting the weak and the vulnerable to keep people distracted from more important issues that would improve life for everyone on the planet.

I’m glad you liked the Carlin vid! It really says it all, doesn’t it!?

And he was so prescient–this was from 1996, way before the whole explicitness of the anti-contraception and women-being-compared-to-livestock-in-legislative-halls recently…but this shit has been simmering for a loooong time.

 Another response could be “What if Klara Hitler had an abortion?”

Yeah, ’cause Googling abortion is a *totally* reputable way to get accurate medical information!!  **headdesk**

Guess what–I have actually scrubbed in and witnessed a D&C on a deceased post-implantation embryo of a wanted pregnancy.  I looked at all the tissue under the microscope in great detail.  I can assure you: NOT A FUCKING BABY. The thought in my head was “that’s IT?!”

“Responsibility” (which is how that’s spelled, btw) does not mean I have to give up the right to my body. It also doesn’t mean I owe a mindless blob a damn thing. Responsibility also means thinking seriously about consequences and making an educated decision about whether or not to bring a new person into the world.

Comparing financial obligations to the forceful use of someone’s very SELF is dehumanizing and disgusting.

True,what do you say to that???

(To be fair I was quoting George Carlin for that…I wish I’d thought of it myself though!)

Don’t go looking for consistency in Christianity. Your head might explode. And yeah, I’ve never been clear on how exactly an embryo is so pure and innocent and yet apparently have full moral stature as individuals. “Innocent” apparently means “free of all moral responsibility” which in this case would be more accurately described as “mindless.” If a fetus is “innocent,” then so is the bacteria in my colon.

True,sceince and reason go out the window when it affects their life!

Yes, but this particular complete unified organism is a human being.  That you see no substantive difference between a human being and protozoa says volumes about your moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

The other thing that give testimony to that bankruptcy is that the point being made by citing the completeness and unification of the organism was to demonstrate that it was substantively different than a clump of hair, or an appendix.  As a complete unified HUMAN organism is was a thing quite different from cells from a human.  These are not cells from a human, they ARE a human.  It is the difference between the part and the whole.

I say her mother shouldn’t have been raped. Does that make me a bad person?

Should people stop rapes, since that would have also stopped her from being born. If I see some woman being raped, and can stop it, should I? I mean, the woman doesn’t want to be raped, but it could prevent her child from being born. 

Is she advocating rape, since if the rape hadn’t happened she wouldn’t have been born either.

 There’s a reason I call him Saint George.

I’m a long-time fan of that brilliant, bitter, cranky, hilarious old man.

 Totally agree, but that’s why Catholics have a problem with contraception.

All sceientific terms thats all,the end result is all the same. At which sceintific name does the “blob” become homosapian and not a puppy dog. By this logic your a silly sasuage

I beg to differ. It’s very plainly scientifically disputable. If it wasn’t, we’d have a solid answer based on facts, not guesses and beliefs and faith. 

But if you know something the rest of the world doesn’t, feel free to share. 

Also, does anyone else note that the pro-choice crowd is pretty open about the fact that we’re not sure when life starts yet, but the forced birth crowd chooses to lie, even when they could make their arguments using the that we don’t know?

My mother was one of those few (though highly exaggerated) women who used abortion as birth control. I was the first kid she had, and she only ever had one other after me. 

Do I agree with what she did? No. Do I feel like I have any say? Not really. It was her choice. 

The father of the would-be baby does not have any rights to my body. So no, they don’t have natural right to the discussion. If I got pregnant, I would probably discuss it with the would-be father as a courtesy, but I make the ultimate decision. He would have no say init.

I refuse to listen to the “scientific” musings of someone who doesn’t know that the proper scientific nomenclature is Homo sapiens.

The species that DNA represents does not provide us with our humanity–otherwise, my tonsils would be sacred. And, a placenta would be just as human as a baby.

Here’s a clue: “sapiens” is actually the Latin word for “wise.”  So, it would seem that what makes us human in a philosophical sense is our ability to think…

Yours is defence of sceince and reason to an atheist point of view until it infringes on your “right ” to terminate a child who you created and want rid of because they willaffect your freedom. welcome to adulthood. if you jump of a bridge and dont give gravity your “consent”, the  resalt is the same. Life dosent seek your approval its a concequence of your actions

Your philosophical jump from being composed of human cells to being morally an intellectually a human is a non-sequitir.

So, does the humanity of the cells that then develop into the placenta and chorionic membranes get revoked?

If human cloning is developed to the point that we CAN make skin cells into full people (not suggesting we should!) does a skin cell become a complete organism as soon as it is sloughed off?

What does “complete” and “unified” even MEAN, from a biological perspective, and why should biology = destiny? How can a clump of cells be a whole human without a heart, liver, or brain?

It’s not a fad. It’s the law. It’s why the government doesn’t force us to donate sperm, eggs, blood, plasma or organs. In fact, bodily autonomy is respected so much, that they won’t even use organs from somebody who is dead if they weren’t an organ donor in life.  What other situation is there where I would be forced to use my body to keep somebody else alive? Even if I hit a guy with my car and he needs an emergency blood transfusion and I’m the only available match, they could not legally force me to give my blood.

If and when you do have children you will realise life as you knew it will end. you do give up your freedom and at times it will be with reluctence and other times happily.Then as you look at your child you will realise what an abortion does in a whole new way

1) LeftSidePositive said “moral” sense

2) The embryo/fetus is using my body without my consent. (No, consent to sex =! consent to be pregnant)

Nope, most people I know who have had children say the experience of pregnancy makes them more pro-choice than ever.

And I’m not going to confuse a wanted, breathing, physically present child who can communicate with me with an embryo, because I am not an idiot.

Afaik, the majority of women in the US who get an abortion already have children. Also, I’ve had a miscarriage, and it didn’t change my view about abortion. Nice try though. 

NOT A FUCKING CHILD!!! A FETUS IS NOT A FUCKING CHILD!!!!!

HOW MOTHERFUCKINGLY DENSE ARE YOU?!?!?!?

Do you seriously think you can pull the same bullshit over and over again, after we’ve easily refuted it MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES and think you’re getting somewhere?

You are a worthless fucking troll and you are repeating yourself and adding NOTHING WHATSOEVER to the discussion with your simple-minded, repetitious idiocy.

Abortion terminates an embryo. MAYBE a fetus if the pregnancy wasn’t detected early enough.  It is physically impossible for an abortion to terminate a child SO SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT CONVINCING ANYONE!!!

When we figure out how to fix the consequences of our actions, modern medicine and engineering FIXES IT.  You are one babbling idiotic naturalistic fallacy.

And don’t you fucking DARE put my rights in quotation marks, you authoritarian self-righteous asshole!!

 Sorry, I read your post wrong. My bad.

What bigotry exactly? Who is LSP being bigoted against??

 I don’t care if it is a human being. Why does it get to have rights to my body?? There is no other situation in which somebody else is allowed to have rights to use my body to stay alive.

“I have a right to control my own body” is bigotry?!?!?!
What the FUCK??

“I have a right to determine my own emotional responses to my own life” is bigotry?!?!?!

What the FUCKETY FUCK??

Calling out someone who is being an asshole for being an asshole is not bigotry. It’s accuracy.  I provided reasons for why Mother Teresa was an asshole.  You need to go to the dictionary–what you’re calling “bigotry” is actually pronounced “accountability.”

Well, at least you’re consistent. Of course, this consistency would force you to try to force me to remain pregnant and relive the rape that put me in that situation every day. But at least a zygote wasn’t killed*!!

*until after it’s born, then most anti-choicers don’t give a shit about what happens to the baby.

Anon: “there are many valid secular arguments that can be made for both positions, so stop treating it like its not a moral issue.”

Name three.  You say there are “many”, but I for one have never so much as heard of a single valid argument for the fetus-fetishists, just a bunch of shitty ones, and only a handful of the shitty ones could be considered “secular” by any stretch of the imagination.  So, what are these allegedly “valid” and “secular” arguments for forcing women to carry unwanted parasites at great risk to their own lives and health?  And why can’t I use the same arguments to cut out one of your kidneys without anesthetic because I know someone who needs a transplant?

 According to that logic  I guess you wouldn’t care if someone decided to kill you now.  As long as it was their decision that you were an inconvenience to them and they decided that they would be better off without you.

“until after it’s born, then most anti-choicers don’t give a shit about what happens to the baby.”

That’s just more bigoted bullshit.  Ad hominem writ large.

No, it isn’t. Once you have a zygote, you have a new organism of the parent species. I don’t think you’ll ever find a biologist who disagrees that a fetus produced by human parents isn’t human.

It arguably isn’t a “being”, and it would be absurd to consider it a “person”. But to not recognize it as human betrays a poor understanding of basic biology.

You have still utterly failed to provide any argument as to why an embryo has any moral weight, or indeed has any of the qualities that we care about in humans. And “potential” for moral weight doesn’t count for a damn thing until it actually FULFILLS the potential. Something is complete because it has the potential to be complete? That means that every incomplete thing is actually complete!!  Something is whole when it’s still developing its parts?? What utter bollocks!

How does a “human organism” have “unity” when a substantial portion of its biomass is going to form into a placenta? You haven’t addressed that, nor do you have anything but the most muddled grasp of what “unity” and “completeness” could even possibly mean in this context.

 This is not a logical argument to support murder by abortion. In an abortion, one life dies for the convenience for another who doesn”t want to carry that life for nine months.

I’m curious, just what species do you consider a fetus produced by human parents to be, if it isn’t human?

This has nothing to do with when life starts. That is basic biology: a new life starts when two gametes fuse to create a zygote. The issue with respect to the ethics of abortion should be concerned with when a new person comes into existence. If you believe in a soul, that could be as early as conception (but not necessarily- the few references found in the Bible seem to mark that point as birth). If you don’t believe in a soul, and look to science for answers, you’ll probably set a point where brain function reaches a certain degree of complexity- probably the last few months before birth.

Neither is a fetus.

 Yes it is.  It meets all the definitions of life except those that are made up to rationalize abortion.

Monty Python is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMx6X26iJ_c

 What about adoption? What about life, even with a handicap is better then being killed?

You said “separate human being who has the right to live”

It doesn’t meet ANY of the definition:

It’s not separate.

It doesn’t have an adequately developed brain and therefore cannot perceive itself or be a human being in any reasonable meaning of the term.

It doesn’t have a sense of self so “who” is not applicable.

It has no awareness of its existence, has never existed as a mental agent, and can experience no benefit or harm from anything done to it, so it has no basis for needing or using any rights.

No being ever has rights at the expense of anothers’ so it’s “right to live” is irrelevant.

No, idiot, she cares now because she HAS A BRAIN NOW and has an investment in and awareness of her life.

She is also, I presume, not taking up residence in someone else’s body at the moment.

Yeah, and for everyone who doesn’t love you for this “selfless act of self-sacrifice,” you’ll consign them to burn in hell for all eternity.

Also, how the fuck does it “benefit others” to save them from a situation you yourself put them in??

 not true. There are pro life organizations that are specifically working to promote adoption, even of those babies conceived through rape. They also provide support to the mothers during the pregnancy.

 The state isn’t exploiting anyone’s body. The state is protecting the life of the innocent and most vulnerable in our society.  That is a very valid secular purpose and and the most basic  inalienable right- the right to life.

A person is a legal definition, not a scientific one. You should know that.

The law does not recognize an early term fetus as a person, and does not grant it any rights. You should also know that.

Science can define when a new life starts, and it can help us with our legal definition of “person” by showing when cognition reaches different levels of complexity, or when memories start forming. But it can’t define “person”.

 Her rebuttal would be that this is an illogical and idiotic argument. Saving the life of the child conceived by rape when it occurs in no way logically supports the argument that rape should occur.

 If you say that life begins at birth then for you life is defined by  location and nothing more.  That is the kind of irrational arguments that I was referring to when people try to justify the killing of another human being.

The idea that a human being is not considered to be getting killed (“paying the ultimate price) because of its lack of awareness of itself would also justify killing newborns, older people with dementia, and people in comas. Are you for killing those as well.

 How does that answer the question? A baby that is conceived is not the same as the potential of one that isn’t. 

It is VERY disgusting. 

I don’t think this person is ever going to get it but I appreciate your well thought out comments. 🙂 

 sentient is medical defined as the ability to be responsive or conscious of sense impressions.  Fetuses respond to stimuli at about 8 weeks.  They have touch sensors in their mouths that grow to the rest of their body.  They can hear by the 25th week.  Far from a clump of non sentient cells

Your cancer might disagree with that assessment. It has spent millions of years evolving mechanisms to enable it to survive your body’s assault on it.

And intellectually, your cancer has precisely the same capacity to “want” life as a fetus does, at least  for the first 6 or so months of development.

Have you seen the state of our public schools? Defunding WIC? What about juvenile incarceration rates?!

Actions speak louder than words, motherfucker!

“Even of those babies conceived through rape”??? What the fuck does that mean?  Why would an adoption agency care how a baby was conceived?
And “support” is not enough to make up for a flagrant violation of bodily autonomy, and all the “support” in the world is never going to make up for the pain and suffering inherent in pregnancy, especially when it’s forced.

Have you ever been pregnant?  Do you understand that it’s kind of a big fucking deal?

Also, you’re conflating “being killed” with “never having existed.” A person with a sense of self is not the same as a might-have-been who isn’t even aware of the possibility of existing. And if you saw some of the suffering that I have from infants with deadly genetic conditions, you wouldn’t be so cavalier about this.

Yes, a fetus who is not wanted by the mother is, by definition, a parasite:

parasite |ˈparəˌsīt|nounan organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense.• derogatory a person who habitually relies on or exploits others and gives nothing in return.Knowingwhat wordsmean is not”bigotry.”And it doesn’t matter how “vulnerable” you are, that NEVER gives you free reign to take over someone else’s body.

Do you know what the foster system is like right about now? Do you know how many abandoned children are waiting for homes? In 2010 there were 408,000 kids in foster care and only 53,000 adopted, so you can take your “all children are wanted” and go fuck yourself with it.

And I’m sure as fuck not going to bring a child into the world only to have it’s life be a constant hell of beatings, indoctrination, and sexual repression from some nutso right-wing Christian fundamentalists.  I will tell you right now, I would certainly rather never exist than be born into or sent into such a cesspit.

If killing that “human being” is the only way to get it to stop hurting another human being, then yes, in fact you can kill it.  This is what the police do ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

Citation desperately fucking needed.

 There is no other situation where the life if an innocent human being is killed for the convenience of another. 

 Yeah, tell that to all the kids in foster care who are still waiting for a forever family.

 Wow,  you sound alot like Margret Sanger.

No, you motherfucking strawmanning idiot, a newborn is actually generally aware enough to be considered sentient for the purposes of this discussion. And, it is independent physiologically so it can be cared for by anyone without having to encroach on anyone’s rights. Furthermore, the vast majority of newborns have people who are close to them and are invested in their wellbeing and care about their survival (and no one person’s needs supersede that of the newborn because it’s not inside anyone’s body, having been, you know, BORN and all).

This really wouldn’t be hard for you to grasp if you weren’t such a willfully ignorant intellectually dishonest dipshit.

 Actually, yes you can. The woman chose to take the risk of getting pregnant when she had sex. Every choice has a consequence, and in the case of sex that consequence is pregnancy (among others). Whether or not the woman wants to be pregnant doesn’t change the fact that she made the choice to risk it in the first place.

If this hypothetical woman does end up being pregnant after choosing to have sex, that makes her fully responsible for the child. Whatever the stage of development it’s in when she finds out, there’s a huge potential there. This child could be a chemist, physicist, architect, teacher, or anything. If the woman then has an abortion, then not only is she deliberately murdering the person they could be, but she’s being incredibly
irresponsible as well. Realistically, if a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, she should take the other road and choose NOT to have sex in the first place.

This used to be my stance on abortion, not anymore. Today I understand that it’s much more complicated than I originally thought. Therefore I have no right to say what a woman should or should not be doing in the case of an unplanned pregnancy. But to say that you cannot be supportive of a womans right to choose and be pro-life, well, that’s fallacious. It depends purely on how you define choice, and as you can see here, choice can be defined in many ways.

 By the way, capitalizing that it is a fetus does not change the fact that a fetus is a child.

There’s a huge difference between “ability to be responsive or conscious of sense impressions” and actual sentience.   Or do you consider venus fly traps sentient as well?

Because when the baby is in my body it falls under my jurisdiction of my bodily autonomy. This is not hard for anyone to grasp, provided they’re not a willfully ignorant forced-birther shitstain.

Why value life so little that it depends upon the consent of someone else to continue?

BECAUSE THAT “SOMEONE ELSE” IS PROVIDING THE ORGANS AND THE NUTRIENTS TO MAKE THAT LIFE POSSIBLE. That person is putting their health on the line for a potential “life.” That potential life would be utterly impossible without the astounding investment of resources a mother’s body has to devote to it. That person is experiencing the pregnancy WAY more than the fetus is even capable of doing.Respecting people’s rights to consent to what happens to their own bodies IS valuing life. If you don’t value consent, you don’t value human beings, and therefore cannot possibly value anything morally meaningful in “life.” (Your valuing life at the expense of someone else’s consent is also pretty damn callous to all the women who have killed themselves or been butchered trying to rid themselves of a fetus who had invaded their bodies without their consent!)

By your logic if another human being needs the resources of another to survive then that person is not worth saving.  That is morally bankrupt position.  If you truly value human life why not try and protect the most vulnerable and innocent in our society? The value of human life is not dependent upon the consent of another that it should continue to live.

 You don’t have to believe it but don’t mischaracterize it

Yes it is. If I need a kidney transplant and nobody else consents to donate, then I will die. We do not force people to donate the use of any organ to another person

 Wow i didn’t know that morality of the right to life is based upon potential.

In another post you begged in such a nice fashion for a cite to show that fetuses feel touch and sense stimuli at 8 weeks,    Here is your cite

  http://www.ampainsoc.org/library/bulletin/jul03/article1.htm

 So the right to life depends on you knowing you are alive?  How does that effect the right of those that have dementia? Or those in a coma? Or those infants not old enough to have that realization?

Yes I have seen far more suffering than I imagine you have and I do not take it cavalier.   I am also painfully aware of the plight of  handicapped children. The fact that some children are born with disabilities or genetic disorders in no way justifies abortion on demand as you seem to be saying,

You keep sidestepping the point that a zygote/blastocyst ISN’T a “human being”………it has the potential to become a human being.

If it doesn’t develop past the point of being a zygote/blastocyst, then it ISN’T a human being yet,  it’s a human zygote/blastocyst.

Yet again, the potential to someday become a human being isn’t the same thing as BEING one.

 You know typing in all caps does not make your argument any better.  The fact that the other human being is inside the body of another human being doesn’t give one person more rights then the other. They each have the same right to life.  The right to life is not dependent upon the consent of one person no matter how many times you say it.  They each share that same right.  sorry if that means that as a woman you have to bear the biological connection for a while but that does of give you the right to kill another human being.   Between the “right” you have to your body for a period of nine months and the right of an innocent child to be born I will side with the child.

I love women and believe they are far more then baby makers, but when a baby is made then that baby has rights.  I don’t care that label you put on it during its stage of development it is still a human being and in alot of cases (maybe 50%) it is a a female. You are taking away that females right to live because as a female you think your rights trump hers.  i don’t agree  and if you as a fowl mouthed feminist thinks that makes me a women hater so be it,

You can PERSONALLY be pro-life without imposing it on others. But that’s called being pro-choice.

The fact that the other human being is inside the body of another human being doesn’t give one person more rights then the other.

Well, for one thing, you’ve still failed to establish a fetus is even a person.  For another, the fact that one human is inside another’s body DOES in fact mean that it is incapable of making it’s own decisions, and that it exists at the pleasure of the body sustaining it. Anything less would revoke the sustainer’s rights to her body.

They each have the same right to life.

Which means that if one of them wants to live independently, she has the right to do so.  And if the other one CAN’T live independently, then tough shit for them.

The right to life is not dependent upon the consent of one person no matter how many times you say it.

You are arguing against decades of human rights precedent, so you’re going to have to offer up a better case than that.  You might want to read up on the Nuremberg code…

sorry if that means that as a woman you have to bear the biological connection for a while

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU UP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING ASS!!!This level of dismissal of women’s rights is ASTOUNDING in its callousness and condemns women to pain, suffering, and medical complications and permanent second-class citizenship status.  For you to be so smug and trivializing about how women suffer during pregnancy shows you have no human decency.  Many women would rather DIE than endure an unwanted pregnancy, and even those who don’t can have lifelong psychological trauma from the experience.NO ONE has the right to force another human being to bear any kind of “biological connection,” nor does anyone have the right to use their crackpot ideas as a justification from withholding medical care from another person.

but that does of give you the right to kill another human being.

  Yeah, actually it does.  If a someone breaks in to my house I have the right to shoot them, and if someone breaks into my womb I will defend myself.

Between the “right” you have to your body for a period of nine months

Don’t you DARE put my rights in quotes, you motherfucking scumbag!  I retain the rights to my body AT ALL TIMES because I am a human being and I deserve human dignity.

and the right of an innocent child to be born

No one ever has a right to be born.  Being born is a process that requires another human being, and no one ever has the right to the use of another human being against zir will.

I will side with the child.

When it’s in your body you may make whatever choices you want for it, but when it is in someone else’s it is NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.

I love women and believe they are far more then baby makers,

Actions speak louder than words, shithead.

but when a baby is made then that baby has rights.

You have still failed to provide a SINGLE argument for any instance where a living person gets to exploit someone else’s body, and yet we’re supposed to just take your word for it that pregnant women’s rights are fungible…bullshit.

I don’t care that label you put on it during its stage of development it is still a human being

Argument from assertion is not a valid argument. Ignoring biology and neuroscience to make your assertions is even less valid.

You are taking away that females right to live

NO ONE’S right to live includes the right to use someone else’s body. EVER. Female or not.  You have not provided a single counterexample to this principle, so put up or shut up.

because as a female you think your rights trump hers.

 If she’s in my body, then by definition I have rights and she doesn’t, because I am under no obligation to suffer anything through my body. This is not difficult.

and if you as a fowl mouthed feminist

First, learn to spell “foul.” And second, you are so utterly odious that profanity is necessary to even approximate an adequate description of your vile, festering disregard for equality and human rights, not to mention your atrocious faults of reasoning and pigheaded repetitious pronouncements, that calling you out in a manner you deserve is a public service.

 If the law defined a person as a man, would that make all women not a person? Of course not. So how the law defines a person is not the determining factor of what is a person.

Your logic implies that I had an opinion, hence free will, at conception. If that is true then I can honestly say no one asked me if I wanted to be born, I can honestly assert that I was born against my will.

Your a lawyer right? I would like to file criminal charges against my parents for kidnapping me from the great nothingness and unlawful imprisonment within a uterus for 9 months.

If you cannot see that the value of my life and my autonomy is not dependent on the biological accidents of my womb, then you are a motherfucking bastard.

And I don’t see where “value” of an embryo comes in.  It has no damn brain. And I value my womb, thank you very much, and I DECIDE what I do or do not want inside it.  This is not a value judgement of one zygote over another, this is simply my right to do what I want with my body.

Btw, reducing the whole medical risk, physical pain, and extraordinary physiologic demand of pregnancy to “location” is pretty fucking condescending.

 So how does preventing same sex marriage benefit me? 

I never called you demented. I called you a dishonest fucking douchebag and an idiot.  There is a difference.

I mentioned dementia in the context of your other strawman arguments, which I have already answered and you have senselessly repeated. Holy shit, your reading comprehension sucks!You may pompously say you “disagree,” but you are going against every established human rights principle there is.

You can think whatever the fuck you want.  You can think aliens talk to you through your toaster for all I care. But don’t try to force your views on others, and don’t think your fucked-up worldview justifies denying people their right to medical care.

 I stated that at 8 weeks a fetus can respond to stimui. I never said anything about pain. 

Here is the exact quote from what I cited;

At 7.5 weeks’ gestation, reflex responses to somatic stimuli begin, and
touching the perioral region results in a contralateral bending of the
head. The palms of the hands become sensitive to stroking at 10.5 weeks,
and the rest of the body and hindlimbs become sensitive at
approximately 13.5 weeks. Shortly after the development of sensitivity,
repeated skin stimulation results in hyperexcitability and a generalized
movement of all limbs.

It proves what I said. 

But it doesn’t mean that someone will *definitely* love them, and it doesn’t mean that whatever you are loosely defining as love will be enough to sustain that child’s physical and psychological needs.

And the extraordinary numbers remaining in the system are pretty solid evidence that not enough are wanted.

 It is more responsible to kill an unborn child then to give it up for adoption because it might be abused or neglected? That is some warped logic. It is better if I kill you now because you might feel pain later?  Where does that end?

I am a sentient being. I have the capacity to make my own choices. I have awareness of my existence, goals, and needs.  A fetus does not have any of these. Never experiencing anything and never being aware of the world is not a loss, it is simply not existing. I can’t believe you are too dense to understand this.

 Let me say this very clearly-  I understand your arguments, I don’t agree with them. The definition of human life is not dependent upon sensory or self awareness. Nor does that make one who has yet to experience that not something that is not existing.  It is how you want to think of it so that you can say you have the right to kill it.

No sperm and eggs are a waste product until they combine

Oh, you don’t agree with them? Big whoop.  Way to really thoughtfully defend your position, there!

So, if human life is not dependent on self-awareness, how DO you define human life?

I don’t think anyone denies an embryo/fetus exists in the sense of it as a physical entity. My question is how do you define HUMANITY and what argument do you have for why a fetus would have such a thing?By the way, if you think you understand my arguments, you don’t–I maintain I have the right to kill anything that’s violating my body REGARDLESS of whether or not it is sentient, but the fact that a fetus is not sentient is the reason I see no need to feel bad about it.

Ha thanks for that,now start using some sapien

So you are saying my mother has more rights than I did as a fetus? Go figure. :/

 No I am saying that the law does not recognize your right for being born without your consent or the consent of your mother for that matter.  It comes up in cases where the other would have aborted the child but the doctor screwed up and the child was born. 

 You have just proven that i understand your arguments completely.  You use the idea that the fetus is not sentient to remedy your guilt for killing it. Why would human life be dependent upon self awareness? Human life begins at conception in my opinion.  If you want to say that it is dependent upon a heart beat or brain activity I can agree with tat as well-  that is about two weeks or less into development.  That is how we define death, so it should  be how we define life.

 A fetus has a humanity just like you do- it is a human being, albeit a small one, but a human being nonetheless.

No i listen to what woman tell me who have had abortions, you can deny it all you like at this stage but it will hit you one day

If you “protect” a fetus inside a woman against her will, you are enslaving the woman.  That makes you a fucking douchebag and a disgrace to the principles of human rights.

A baby cannot be unborn.  A baby is, by definition, a recently-born human.

And, you’re just fucking wrong.  IN NO OTHER PART OF SOCIETY WHATSOEVER do we trash some people’s civil rights and violate their bodies in order to give advantage to other people, no matter how dire their need.

We will always disagree because you are an unthinking idiot who cannot get past your trite little talking points long enough to develop some empathy for ACTUAL human beings, instead of fetishizing fetuses.

Ah more responsable,mmm well not getting pregnant, but now that you are, reassess you life as you knew it to acommadate a new son or daughter,brother or sister grandson or grandaughter. you see there is other people involved and affected by your lifes choices

 “Having” as in “going to have”, as in future tense, as in NOT OCCURRED YET.

She has GOT a zygote (and should probably be aware of that). She is GOING TO HAVE (given she chooses to carry it) a baby.

Lefty ,you need a hug,go make a cuppa and relax. Belive it or not im serious.We are having a debate that is emotional by nature but needs to be kept in context

Are you too fucking callous to realize that birth control fails sometimes? Are you too fucking ignorant to realize that some men intentionally sabotage their partner’s birth control as a means of abuse?

Who the fuck are you to tell me how I should reassess my life?  If I like my life as I know it, not as I “knew it,” it will fucking stay the way I want, because I don’t owe anyone my life and my ambitions.I don’t give a fuck who may be “affected” by my life’s choices over my own body, because when it comes to my RIGHTS, I will do whatever I damn well please and what is best for my body, because it is MINE.

N o Amy i dont need to

 I do that every time i read your comments.

 You do know that “alternatives to abortion” provide an image of support for mothers during pregnancy to give them hope that they may be able to financially cope with a child after all, only to wait just long enough that she gets emotionally attached to the child and no longer wants to abort. Then they turn the screws on and tell her she is out of her mind if she thinks she can support a child, she is all alone and a sinner and no role model for an innocent baby, so she had better give it up. Your religious beliefs can be a real asshole when there’s a healthy white baby up for grabs.

http://jezebel.com/5351936/crisis-pregnancy-centers-creating-artificial-orphans

No, Mother Teresa was an asshole. The fact that you’ve become aware of this and deny it says a lot more about what you’re about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj54GBWTUMc

Ive just finished watching a youtube vidio of a 12wo baby being aborted by suction while being filmed on ultrasound.You see it go from a calm heart rate of 140bpm to over 200 and violently thrash around the womb trying to escape while its limbs get suctioned off,they couldnt suck the head up so they crushed it with forceps first.I was glad to find out it was only cells and not really a human,although looking at the peices ,it did have hands and feet and a face

 Nobody owes anyone a fresh newborn when there are children waiting to be adopted. Why don’t y’all put your money where your mouth is and value life of a child who is waiting to live in someone’s home and be their kid. No, you get Christians who can’t have a child of their own and they want a shiny white brand new one that looks like them that they don’t have to advertise to everyone that they’re sterile. Prey on abortion clinics and steal yourself some babies!

Furthermore, value the life of everyone after they’re born, you are like, well, they didn’t give the baby up for adoption, I’m not going to help them be able to keep those babies easily. Social programs would certainly help a lot of people feel less like abortion (or adoption) was the only way out. Cheap, available birth control and birth control education, don’t shut down the PP just because they do abortions too. Help families stay together and not be in a chronic cycle of poverty. In case you don’t get it, carrying a child to term is not only biologically hard on a woman’s body, but they cost so damn much, even if you’re not super-poor. No one who wishes there was some way to keep their own baby should have to give it over. Getting an abortion is certainly humane, you disagree. It’s like, every time I have my period, I could have been pregnant, fertilizing that egg, yeah, that’s still a bunch of stuff that gooks up a tampon to me. There’s no sacred rights for the lining of my uterus with or without a fertilized egg in it.

But some people do wish there was a financially viable option, one which would not separate the infant from its mother for the rest of its life. Anyway, it’s about choice. Everyone knows adoption is one of those choices. Keeping a baby that you wish you didn’t have to give up is another one of those choices – so you are anti-choice because I don’t see all these social programs making the choices easier. They all weigh different weights, and you make abortion out to be the heaviest one. It’s a lot lighter than having a kid you can’t afford or letting someone else profit from you having sex. That’d make them pimps, I felt like I had to explain the joke because you seem quite humorless.

Exactly. I’m (mostly) glad for who I am. I’m glad that every single little detail of their coitus aligned to produce me. If any one little detail were off and changed, well, I wouldn’t truly care because I wouldn’t have been born and nothing could be done at that point.

(I wish I had been born as a girl, but science can take care of that.)

(Also, thinking about oblivion is weird, cause trying to put yourself in the mindset of never having existed is impossible)

 Technically, birth control isn’t a right, it’s a privilege of having Western secular society.

 Well, if she says she has a baby, but she says she’s having a baby; in the future when it becomes a baby, then she will have it. Also, if you’re going to use big words, learn to spell at least some of them.

 It’s offputting to hear someone drone on about the “rights of a child” when their position requires confusing a fetus with a child, and has no consideration whatsoever for the rights of a full grown woman.

“Right to life is not absolute.  Hmmm…”
.
The next question is going to be about your stance on the death penalty.

 But you should give up your medically necessary medications for the sake of a fetus, and stroke out from your migraines, so you can give up a baby for adoption.  Never mind the fact that if you stroke out and possibly die it’s highly unlikely there will be any baby to give up for adoption.  Such logic never makes it into the brains of those who consider women disposable incubators for the exalted fetus. 

I don’t think it’s a mischaracterization. The core principle of Christianity is what makes it the most ethically damaged of all major religions: the idea that a third party can forgive you for wrongs committed against somebody else. That idea is so foul and corrupt that it taints every aspect of Christianity. It requires every Christian who seeks to operate ethically to step away from his religion.

Absolutely, if the law defined a person as a man, a woman would not be a person. Are you so ignorant of history to not know that at various times and in various cultures (including our own), women, children, and slaves have all been classified as non-persons, or partial persons? Non-persons have limited or no rights, and can generally be killed without legal consequence.

What happened to the alleged right of a child to grow up with their biological parents?

Have you watched the youtube video where a mom repeatedly hits, pinches and kicks his 8 month old baby? I couldn’t stand it for more than 10 seconds, but I searched her case and she alleged the baby was result of a rape and that she hated the little poor thing. Abortion should be a decision, this woman was lucky her mom loved her anyway but it’s not always the case. 

 Then explain why those budgets increase each and every year?

Also, perhaps conservatives think that being a dependent to a state that’s going broke feeding all the dependents is not a good idea.

I know liberals are constitutionally incapable of understanding that total dependence on the state is a bad idea.  They are after liberals.

Your premise about the pro-life vs. pro-choice movement is completely wrong, as there is a community of pro-lifers within the atheist movement. We obviously don’t believe a zygote has a soul. I can only speak for myself, but I believe that an implanted embryo is an unborn human. It’s life has already began. A newborn baby is no less human than an elderly person, but there is far more time between the development of these two people than there is between that of an implanted embryo and a newborn baby. Once the process of making a human life has begun, it’s a human life. Taking a life is taking a life. I’m not saying I don’t have the utmost sympathy and respect for a rape or incest survivor. My heart breaks for them. And I could even be in their shoes some day. But that doesn’t change the fact that an abortion takes a life. If this life is all we get–and I believe that it is–snuffing out someone’s life is one of the cruelest crimes imaginable.

 You’re right.  After all, there’s no shortage of people wanting to adopt a baby with a medical history like mine.

 Wow! That’s nice. So, biology is destiny after all?

In what way is it cruel to duplicate a process which takes place hundreds of thousands of times a day naturally, on a biological organism which has no sentience? I would argue that it is significantly more cruel to force a woman or girl to gestate her rape fetus against her will and re-live the trauma of rape every day for nine months, then subject her to a painful delivery with risk of invasive sugery or death, and the lengthy recovery period thereafter, to live for the rest of her life with not only the trauma of her rape but also the consequences to her mind and body of enduring an unwanted pregnancy, than to remove something smaller than a walnut from her body and be done with it. 

I’m waiting for one of our pet fundies to jump in here and have the audacity to tell you that you ought to remain celibate for the rest of your life. Mostly because I want to see you kick the shit out of them.

 Then neither is it appropriate for women to litigate men’s financial and self-determination rights. You want to remove men from all pre-birth decisions? Then you should have no right(and neither should the government) to involve men in any way post-birth.

 In order to save us from himself.

That settles it.  I’m firing my doctors and throwing away all my medications.  If only I’d known years ago that all I needed to do to get rid of my life-threatening migraines, un-deform my hips, teach my pancreas how to work normally, and grow second kidney was to reassess my life. 

I can’t believe I ever chose to have life-threatening migraines, deformed hips, a janky pancreas, and unilateral renal agenesis in the first place.  Life choices.  Who knew they were magic?

 Like I said, Christianity is built but a selfless act of sacrifice.

 Wow! Veered off the rails, crashed and burned.

No, I’m not arguing that at all. I am saying that if men can’t even hold an opinion on the subject of abortion(which isn’t even about abortion at all), then they should have no responsibilities afterwards.

A woman decides to have an abortion because she isn’t ready for parenthood. Man has no choice but to accede to her demand.

A woman decides to carry to child to term but give it up for adoption because she is not ready for parenthood. Man has no choice but to accede to her demand.

A woman decides to have the child, and doesn’t want anything to do with the father, financially or otherwise, and is herself financially capable. Man has no choice but to accede to her demand.

A woman decides to have the child and sues the father for support. Man has no choice but accede to her demand.

Two lesbians go to a sperm bank and one of them conceives a child. They subsequently split up and the courts force the sperm bank to divulge the donor’s identity so he can be sued for support. Man has no choice but accede to her demand.

If your entire argument rests on the fact that the man doesn’t endure a pregnancy, then I propose he be made to support the child after birth–but not the mother–for the length of her pregnancy.

I can see no logical reason to support children they don’t want while abortion and adoption are viable options.

I think it is likely that as an actual person, he did not even exist. And if he did, I think he was probably just a wandering charismatic rabbi, one of many. I don’t think he suffered any more or less than most people.

Even if he existed, he saved nobody.

Not true. Morality is not based upon a consensus. If so, that would make the holocaust ethical.  until 1973 the consensus in this country was that a fetus was a person that deserved protection. That was changed not by a majority of Americans but by a consensus of 7-2. Currently, the majority of people in America oppose abortion. Does that mean that the fetus is now a person that deserves protection?

If you base your idea of what is ethical upon what the majority of the society believes is ethical then you will be able to try and justify any atrocity.

 The fact that it doesn’t touch you floors me.

 Actually I do understand history very well.  That is why i fight hard for the unborn not to be called anything but humnan.

 So you are saying what is moral and what is an atrocity – while the SCOTUS favored against your opinion. The only reason the majority thinks an embryo is a human being with the same rights accorded any other human being is due to an overwhelming majority of them having religious beliefs considering the soul of the individual to be more sacred than anyone’s actual life, including that of a newborn. You are equating abortion with a holocaust in the sense of what morality is all about and pro-choice is all about being Hitler. So, Godwin. Don’t get any moles scraped off. Your perspective is an illusion, and the court changed the law because it was the right thing to do. Nobody is trying to justify any atrocities here, you’re the one trying to invent one from nothing.

Sad really that you would probably call a salt shaker a human being if the Jesus told you to. After all, he saved you by dying! Tell me how that actually works, like was he an organ donor? Your wishful thinking warps how you define things that there is no reason to define in such a way. No, I am not touched by the story of how I’m a sinner and owe my salvation to a storybook character so I can pretend something awesome happens after I die, and you calling something a human being which isn’t a human being doesn’t magically make it any more significant than a tick, if you want it removed.

Maybe they feel guilty because they know that they are ending the life of a child and not simply flicking off a tick despite the attempts of people like you to tell them that is what they are doing.

That is exactly what all who support abortion do when they dehumanize the unborn child.  Despite its medical claim as a fetus or a zygote, it is still in actuality a child.  The label doesn’t change its being.  Nor does the willingness of the woman to either accept it or reject it.   It doesn’t become a baby because she wants it just as it doesn’t become a parasite becuase she doesn’t.

Oh, you don’t like it when someone exaggerates? Stop calling an embryo a human being.

 Even doctors will tell you that death itself is pretty ambiguous.

 No, I just find it pathetic when someone demonstrates a near total loss of her humanity.

I almost told you to fuck off and then I read your last paragraph. 🙂

So of course, according to MRA’s, the only solution is for the man to take over the woman’s body. I mean, that’s what they used to do and it was perfectly fair for the menz, right?

 It just dawned on me that I should note that I became a pro-life (anti-abortion) while still and atheist/agnostic who vocally and publicly rejected the Bible, Jesus, and all related religious ideas.

Of course, it comes as no surprise that you got that completely wrong.

I figured you were going to go there. Men do have rights. If they do not desire parenthood, in most of not all US states, all they have to do is legally sign away their paternal rights and claims. Viola, no say, no responsibility.

At least you are consistent.  I will give you that , but I would disagree with you about the consensus regarding the fetus.  How much makes it a consensus? Over 50% 60% 70%? Who decides what that consensus needs to be before something becomes ethical?  

Do we put all moral decisions to a vote?  If the consensus was that pedophilia was ethical would call that moral? Because one society makes it ethical dos that not mean that it wrong as a principle?  Is the Taliban correct in stoning women for adultery because the consensus of that society thinks it is right? If the consensus within society was that father’s could have sex with their daughters, would that make it ethical?

Since the majority of the people in this country are Christians, would it be ethical for them to pass a law that as an atheist you had no right to free speech? Or a job?  I’m not saying constitutional, I’m saying ethical based upon your standard that if the consensus of the society says its ok then it is therefore ethical.  

 Wrong again.  I get just as upset when people chop up “post-born” babies and children.

 Your reading comprehension is pretty low. Have you passed 3rd grade? You can randomly quote-mine me just to insult me, but conveniently ignore the last thing I said to you about what you said right before that.

Rwlawoffice, in this country there are thousands of children already waiting to be adopted. Most of these children will not be adopted and will spend theire children going from place to place and will most likely not get a good education Why would I consign my own child to that when I have a bettter option of wating until I am ready?

 Fuck you. sex does not equal pregnancy. I am allowed to have sex without the fear of getting pregnant. For someone who claims to value the life of a fetus so much, you sure don’t shy away from using it as a punishment for female sexuality. Since this is probably the fifth time this issue has come up in this thread, and it’s already been explained to you. Everytime I see you use the “well don’t have sex” argument, I’m just going to telll you to fuck off.

Yep, and at 8 weeks it’s still using my body to live, so if I don’t wantit using my body then I have every right to expel it from my body. Fuck off.

But it does support the argument that women are mere vessels and even when she was forced to conceive she still has no rights to her own body. Earlier you were arguing that I should be forced to remain pregnant if I CHOSE to have sex. Now I see that even if I don’t consent to the sex, I’m still forced to be pregnant. I believe this calls for another: Fuck you.

We know they’re not wanted because they don’t have any place they can call home. Until they have parents who love and want them, we cannot call them wanted children. Where are all of these magical people who would love to have these children? If these people exist, then why are there still thousands of children in this country waiting to be adopted?

Because everything you say is sarcasm? Oh now I get it. 😉

Out of all my comments in this whole thread, this is the most obviously facetious and it’s the only one you’ve responded to so far.  Why am I not surprised?

I threw that ball as soft and slow as I could.  Now you can go home and tell your parents all about how you hit one of the big kid’s pitches.  I bet if you draw a picture of yourself hitting it, they’d put it up on the fridge.

Also, I am sure if you asked the child, a less than ideal life would be better then no life at all.

Why don’t they adopt someone who was born instead of cajoling women to carry a fetus to term? It’s neglectful and doesn’t say “I value life”. It says, we prefer infants and have a prejudice against living human beings who don’t have parents. Also, how sure can you be? A less than ideal life is not preferable to never having existed. That’s a sort of propaganda, even kids in secure two-parent middle-upper-class homes in want of nothing will assert that they didn’t ask to be born. You’re a peddler of sentimental horseshit.

I am sure if you asked the child, a less than ideal life would be better then no life at all.

That’s a blatantly false assumption. You don’t know anything about the life that child may have. Even in the best of circumstances, there are children born with undetectable defects such as hormone imbalances, neurotransmitter imbalances, brain defects, malformed internal organs, or maybe they just have shitty parents. Nearly all of these conditions are undetectable until a point where abortion is no longer an option (legally, at least). Sometimes that even includes having shitty parents.

Any one of those condition could lead to a life so miserable for the child that they very well could wish death (or in the case of abortion, never living) upon themselves instead of having to live with their own perceived hell they’re living in. Medication can sometimes help, or surgery, but not always. The point is, you can not know how helpful unless you’re living in that situation. Even asking them means nothing, because people like that have learned that giving an honest answer to that question gains them nothing of emotional value or substance.

So again, your assumption is false, and I’d be willing to bet there are far more people who wish they’d been aborted than you could even possibly imagine. I say this because, to a very large degree, I am one of them. Could I be projecting this onto more people than there really are? Yes I can, but you could very well be doing the same in regards to your perspective.

Edit: added quote

 The argument is actually more along the lines of :The unborn gains value based upon the desires of the mother. Until the mother decides that her body can be used as life support for it until such time as it’s born, it’s little more than a parasite.

It’s not the mother taking away it’s right to life, it’s that it only gains that right to life based upon whether or not the mother desires to sacrifice a part of herself to give it that right in the first place.

 You apparently don’t know the definition of an ad hominem.

 “If my mom had aborted me I wouldn’t have cared because I wouldn’t have existed…”

Actually this is not true.  One does not abort what does not exist.  If your mother had aborted you, you would have ceased to exist.  It’s called killing.

 What fucking ad hominem?! You just completely dismissed any arguments for financial assistance from teh government (even when that government forces you to have children you cannot afford/do not want) by calling them typical liberals without addressing any argument. How can you advocate forced births when you are against offering any kind of financial assistance?? You don’t really care about what happens to babies, you only care about controlling women. Fuck off.

 I will always comedown on the side of the saving the life of the most vulnerable and unprotected in our society  then on the side of the temporary loss of complete bodily autonomy. If you think that makes me unloving then so be it.

 fuck you. don’t care. the woman has a right to her own body.

 What ad hominem?  A: That prolife = being against children after they are born.

And is your habit you’ve jump to conclusions that are completely unsupported and non sequitur.  I am NOT against offering any kind of financial assistance.  I just don’t buy the liberal lie that to be for children you have to be for every last social program imagined.

I don’t buy your lies, even if you are obtuse enough to believe them yourself.

 Children that are eligible to be adopted out of  foster care are adopted.  Not enough for sure, but it does happen so it is not an either or proposition.  And please do not try and tell me I have a prejudice against children who are alive and don’t have parents. you know nothing about me, but let me give you a little insight- Our family has a foundation that has built and supports an orphanage in Uganda the houses 120 orphans (because that is all the space we have), a clinic and a school. We also support a children’s home in Mexico that takes care of children that have been removed from their parents who were using them as sex slaves.  My wife and I just attended to Christian Alliance for Orphans seminar where we spent our own time and money to learn how to expand our reach and help more orphans and victims of sexual trafficking.   My wife is also a child advocate volunteer representing children in the foster car system here in our town.  So don’t tell me we don’t care or engage with the children that are all ready here.   I am not telling you thin to toot our own horn, there is far more work that needs to be done, but I am really tired of the implication.

It was the only one I felt was worthy of a response.  If you want to think of yourself as a big kid in this discussion go right ahead.

I’m not dehumanizing anything! 

 Not a strawman at all.  Just the logical extension of your determination of how live is valued. The mother does not give the child the right to life, the right to life is intrinsic to it being a life.  If the right to life is ever determined by the desires of another then it that life is devalued.

Yes it is the exclusive right of the unborn.  Due to biological necessity, the right to life while in the mother’s womb is a right that is exclusive to the unborn.  No matter how many ways people try to use other examples such as blood transfusions or transplants to equate these scenarios it doesn’t equate because of this biological necessity.  And if you think that this is giving more rights to the unborn then to the mother you are correct.  Just like other vulnerable and innocent in our society get more rights than others due to their position, they are entitled to protection that might not otherwise be afforded to others. 

 No, it’s a human being.  Different from an adult only in it’s degree of maturation.  The significant change comes at fertilization.  Any other at which a person is declared to be a human being is a de facto declaration based on different points in that continual process of maturation.

“Evil” conservative pro-lifers do not demonstrate a great value to life outside the womb, but I’m not implying that that’s what makes it ok to kill them. What makes it ok to kill them is that I am not exaggerating what they are like you do.  For that matter, “kill” and “them” and “dehumanizing” are not even appropriate terms. You’re the one, and rlawoffice are the ones who elevate what you’re doing to saving the lives of unborn fully formed human beings who deserve rights but unable to say so themselves because they don’t have fucking mouths yet, or brains, or hearts, but oh, thow itty-bitty hants and footz! If life is precious, I expect you don’t eat meat either? And you never kill spiders or mice cock-a-roachios. Or you’re elevating a non-being to above that of a tick. God created that fucking tick, you moron. What gives you the right to detickenize it?

 Yeah, of course, if I am wrong about abortion, at least I can take comfort in the overwhelming compassion extended by the pro-choicers such as yourself.

Why should anyone worry about life with such tender people fighting for autonomy?

Okay, enough for the sarcasm.

Now you’re dehumanizing all people by equating them with spiders roaches.  Of course your problem there, as elsewhere, is your patent inability to make distinctions.

You equate my finding life precious to my equating all life as precious as human life.

Given that I think dehumanizing people is bad, likewise I think humanizing insects and cattle is bad.

But I get it.  People, born or not, have no more moral standing in your cosmology than ticks, roaches, and cows.

Then again, weren’t you the one who said something along the lines that you wish you hadn’t been born.  That says volumes.  You don’t even put much stock in your own life.

I’ve only ever heard non-Jewish people invoke the Holocaust when discussing abortion, so that’s not a generalization, that’s just my personal experience. The Anti-Defamation League regularly speaks out against anyone comparing the Holocaust to legalized abortion. Of course, the ADL doesn’t speak for everyone, though statistically speaking, Jewish people are more likely to be pro-choice. Even so, that doesn’t make it okay for non-Jews to exploit the suffering of an entire race/culture for the sake of making a flimsy argument.
I only take offense on behalf of my Jewish friends; believe me when I say your opinion of my ‘barbaric position’ means nothing.

 More like I’ve wiped the floor with you every other time you’ve tried to argue with me.  Instead of giving up halfway through like you’ve done in threads past, this time you’ve decided to not try in the first place.

Probably a good move on your part.  Enjoy your tee ball home run.

 LOL!

I stand corrected.

What Kodie did write was…

“It’s not that I do or don’t value my life, it just hasn’t always been so
great that I’d do it over again, and I think people make too much about
dying with regrets”

So basically, same difference, so to speak.

However, you said you wish you hadn’t been born?  Really?

An act of sacrifice that didn’t happen.

Yes, it’s called killing. Like removing an appendix is killing. No person would be killed. “You” wouldn’t be killed, because “you” wouldn’t yet exist. Just a bunch of cells that might have someday become a person would be killed. Which is why so many people have no ethical problem with abortion.

That is the best you have?  Calling an unborn child a tick or a parasite is dehumanizing it for the purposes I have pointed out. 

As for your other arguments regarding the ultrasounds they are equally without merit.  Even the pro choice crows acknowledges that most doctors perform ultrasounds prior to the abortion as a matter of course.  What they balk at is the information that is required to be given to the patient.  They are arguing that this violates the doctor’s right to free speech. This argument failed in the fifth circuit. Over twenty years ago the Supreme Court approved the law requiring patients be given pamphlets and truthful information regarding the procedure including information about the fetus. This is an extension of that requirement and is based upon the same principle.  But let me ask you, why is seeing the fetus that will be killed shaming the woman? Doesn’t she have the right to know all of the truthful information?  

 You are confused.  Again, many here have an absolute dedication to avoiding the distinction between the whole and the part and the distinction between accidental change and substantive change.

But what do you expect.  This is the group that will  allow that inanimate pond scum somehow became animate matter and in time became Scarlett Johansson but not see this as evidence of a loving Creator.  I mean, pond scum to Scarlett Johansson!

No defense for the fact that you think women are less deserving of bodily autonomy than corpses, I see.  Moving on…

Please show me evidence of the pro-choice movement being opposed to allowing women to view the ultrasound.  Citation is desperately fucking needed.

And when you do it, make sure you are paying attention to the difference between women being allowed to view the ultrasound, and being forced to look at the ultrasound/forced to listen to a description of the ultrasound.  I know it’s a difference inconvenient to your agenda, but it’s still important.

The point is that whether or not an ultrasound is necessary should be determined by DOCTORS, not pandering legislators.  If a doctor says its necessary, then an ultrasound should be performed.  If it’s not necessary, then a woman should not be forced to undergo or pay for an unnecessary procedure.  And women should definitely not be forced to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds when an abdominal ultrasound would do, or do you deny that the pro-life movement has attempted to pass such requirements?

It’s a fucking lie to say that these bills are meant to inform women.  Why are there no bills requiring women to watch a video of a rhinoplasty before being allowed to decide to get a nose job?  Why aren’t men required to have their prostates palpated or watch a video of a needle aspiration treatment for priapism before getting Viagra?  Why is it these laws are aimed only at abortion? And why are doctors being required to give false and misleading information? How does lying about a procedure make women more informed about it?

The Supreme Court has approved giving women false information, and I hope to see those decisions overturned in my lifetime.  Abortion does not cause breast cancer, but the law in some states requires doctors to say it does.  Abortion is safer than pregnancy, but the mandatory script does not allow doctors to say that.  The Supreme Court has made ruled incorrectly in the past.  This is another example of the SC getting it wrong.

 “So again, there is only one person who should be able to grant the right
to life (and all others) to a child, and that is the person directly
responsible for it.”

I don’t know where you live or what your nationality is, but here in America we have the quaint idea that human rights are not granted by another person.  Rather, the rights are an integral part of our being, bestowed by a our Creator…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.”

Now, quite aside from whether or not the founders considered “Creator” to be the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Issac, it was certain that the foundational American creed denies that any man has the authority to bestow or deny the unalienable rights.

I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis here:

“Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”Apparently though, for some atheists, Ivan Karamozov was right, if there is no god everything is permitted.One only need have the will to power and one can bestow and deny rights as one sees fit.

 no response needed because I never said it nor implied it.  Show me where i said or implied that a woman has less rights to her body than a corpse and I will respond.

No cite needed because I never said anything about the forcing or allowing the woman to review the ultrasound.  What i said, which was ignored by you was that the argument is that it violates the free speech rights of the doctor.  The argument is that he is being forced to say something he doesn’t want to say.  the Texas law specifically doesn’t require the woman to view the ultrasound.

If it was medically necessary for med to have their prostates examined prior to getting Viagra it could be put into legislation.  I think some women legislators even tried that.

I never said anything about abortions causing breast cancer.  I said truthful information, not only about the risks to the mother but the condition of the fetus.  Why shouldn’t she be told that?

Pond scum does not see the change to Scarlett Johansson as improvement worthy of the Pond Scum God’s efforts.  Or wouldn’t, if it didn’t have consciousness roughly equivalent to an embryo.

I don’t believe Saul of Tarsus performed any such selfless act in creating the religion of Christianity.

 I know you are but what am I?
 Infinity.

This blog inspired me to check out abortion vids on utube.There is one done using an ultrasound where you can see the baby start thrashing around in the womb and the heart beat goes from 140 to over 200 when the suction device is incerted.The man introducing the vid said the doctor who preformed the op and had done 10000 before quit his job after being shown the video.By the way your 50mil abortions since the 70s i assume is only the states,because its 44mil a year world wide

What you and so many people here choose to ignore is that nearly every woman with a concived child was impllisit in its creation,she is responsable.She wasnt walking dowm the street and someone sneezed and she caught a pregnancy,she dropped her pants knowing the risk.

Good quote, While most people can be “good without God” if there is no accountability, any thing goes, just because most think we should live a certain way,you carnt impose that on anyone else, so the most powerful rule, as hitler and stalin proved, as time will show people have short memories

 You are confused.  One, mangled or not, the U.S. Constitution is still the law of the land.  Two, the quote I provided came not from the Constitution but the Declaration of Independence.  It is the foundational document of our country.  The Constitution, as the foundational document of our government, is secondary to it.

That you think that human rights are bestowed by human beings tells me all I need to know about you.  Most pertinent of which is that we will never see eye to eye.

“I do not believe that everything is (or should be) permitted.”

Sure you do, as long as that which is permitted is seen by you as increasing the well being of the majority.  That worked out well for the those subjugated by Soviets, the Khmer Rouge, et alia.  The Gulag after all was for the greater good, as were the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

I mean, after those events, if there’s something that’s still NOT permitted, mark me down as unimpressed.

 You ignored a key aspect in your interpretation. That which increases suffering of even an individual is evil. Therfore your examples are equally as evil and immoral to you as they are to me.

Try again.

If thats an offer Amy,no thanks,ive got a woman who does care and is responsable with her body

You really need to raise you levels of eloquentcy.Foaming at the mouth,veins bulging in the neck,speeeewing explitives, not my idea of eloquent

WOOF GRRRR

From here it would appear you’re intellectually dishonest at best.

“It’s not a question of denying rights, it’s a question of when they are given.”

That’s rich.

You may as well say, “I’m not denying you your rights, I’m just not giving them to you.”

And for the record, they are not my atrocities, they are my examples of atrocities.

I’m sorry for that woman. It’s too bad she’s so personally invested. Whether or not she feels personally offended, she doesn’t get to emotionally hold herself hostage over the issue.

Also, thank you Ericka for writing the article.

The canonical reason leading to large broods is the birth control-sin, but is that the real reason why?

You have to admit In the history of human suffering it was barely even a blip. Also if it were true there’s something too ironic about the god who created human suffering experiencing it himself to take seriously.

I think your problem is your inability to see women as persons legal or otherwise.

The arguments I’ve seen in the comments about “well, if a woman has sex, pregnancy is a likely outcome, so clearly she has no right to complain” makes about as much sense as saying we should stop research into combating STDs, because anyone who has sex is a dirty filthy whore who deserves whatever STDs they get. It’s a ridiculous argument. If a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, then no one should be able to force her into being pregnant. Whether it’s because she had sex and the condom broke, or she was taking an antibiotic at the same time as the pill, or she was raped, or whatever the reason.

As for the woman in the original story, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to find out that she was the product of rape, and that her mother said that she would’ve had an abortion if she could. But things were what they were. As others point out, there are so many potential people that could be, or that would have been if circumstances had been slightly shifted. That doesn’t mean they all could be or should be.

 I really couldn’t answer that. I find the whole idea to be absurd. It hurts my brain to look further into it. 🙂

By definition, anything “pre-birth” is directly affecting the woman and her health, so yeah, she has full and final say on what happens there. Post-birth, it’s not part of her body anymore, so then you can have a say.

Give me an example of a parent held accountable for withholding medical care from a child for refusing to donate a kidney/blood/plasma. No parent would ever be charged with medical neglect for not supplying a kidney, so why should I be charged with anything for not supplying my entire body?? Again, I must say, fuck off.

 Well, if people were attempting to strip you of your right to control your own body I assume you would also be “foaming at the mouth, veins bulging in the neck, speeewing explitives.” Of course, you’re not in any danger of that, so you can treat this as some abstract moral dilemma the likes of which you will never have to actually deal with, but youfeel strongly enough about it that you think you can make this kind of decision for all of us “foaming at the mouth” womenz…you know, cuz we’re all hysterical and all that. I must say again: fuck off.

 That’s not ad hominem, you jag. An ad hominem would be if I said,”what? you’re pro-life, then I’m immediately going to dismiss everything you say and not address your reasoning at all.” That hasn’t happened in this thread. I was merely making the observation that those who claim to be “pro-life” more oftne than not, don’t care a wit about what happens to those children who are born.

If anything, I was making a generalization, but that’s not an ad hominem.

Also, Fuck off.

 It’s even worse, because those same people who claim we should be forced to be pregnant because we CHOSE to have sex, are also saying that even women who didn’t choose to have sex (they were raped) should be forced to remain pregnant.

 No not the same arguments ass hole. The “negros” weren’t living inside of people. Seriously. In this scenario, where a woman has to give up her right to her own body, the woman is the slave (as you put it “chattel”), not the embryo. Stop being a willingly ignorant ass, and you might understand that I”m a person, not a vessel for babies.

You would inflict pain on women who don’t want to remain pregnant.

Fuck off, asshole.

 No, answer my question. Right now it looks like you’re dodging it. In case you forgot, here it is: Why does it get to have rights to my body when there is no other situation in which somebody is allowed to do this??

Also, Fuck off.

 The Declaration of Independence is not the foundation of US government. I would expect more from someone who claims to be a lawyer.

I had a miscarriage and was never given an ultrasound because I didn’t want one. It was hard enough as it was. You don’t know what you’re talking about, so fuck off.

 Again, whatever happens to the fetus, the woman has a right to her own body.

My womb is not a mere “location,” it is my body. Pregnancy doesn’t only affect my womb; it affects my entire body. Go fuck off now, k?

I have four children. I am pro-choice precisely *because* I know first hand how difficult pregnancy, delivery and parenthood can be, and would never force such a hard job with permanant, substantial, life long impacts upon someone who was unprepared and unwilling. So your claim that parenthood somehow magically makes a person decide that a developing, non-sentient fetus or embryo takes presidence over the woman or girl whose life will be permanantly altered in a significant manner, that doesn’t hold water.

I am also pro-choice because I have seen the impacts of your brand of shaming on real, living women. I am pro-choice because I have first hand observations of how the adoption process can permanantly emotionally damage a woman who was forced to carry to term a pregnancy she didn’t want, and then hand over the results to strnagers, and how that has haunted her for her entire life, the guilt, the grief, the rage. I am pro-choice because I understand very well what it is like when a young teenager is raped and the sheer terror involved in waiting to find out if she’s pregnant, knowing her family is anti-choice and would force her to carry the pregnancy, would blame her for the rape. I am pro-choice, in short, because I am a compassionate person, because I am a parent, and because I am a survivor.

That is a stretch but ok, I will respond. The issue is not that pro life proponents are calling for ladies to have less bodily autonomy than a corpse, we are calling for an unborn child to be given the same rights as all other living humans, namely the right to life and not to be killed by the decision of another. Just like the wishes of a person regarding his organs are honored, the fetus should not have his body torn apart without his consent to benefit another.

 Just because I disagree with you, doesn’t mean I don’t know about pregnancy.   I know far more about it then you think. What I specifically know is that although it is possible the effects can last a lifetime, the pregnancy itself is temporary. 

Yes, perhaps that would be another crime, but not murder. And the fact that the primary crime is attempted murder (for which the punishment should be the same as for murder) means the secondary crime is, basically, redundant. But I know that prosecutors love totting up long lists of crimes, so have at it, prosecutors.

Well since Paul did not create Christianity then that is really irrelevant.

So you don’t have any proof that the pro-choice movement is opposed to women being given information about medical procedures.  I thought as much.  Can you, just once, engage in this debate without lying?

(Hint: The pro-choice movement is opposed to women being given FALSE information.  We’re all for women being given accurate information.)

Your right to bodily autonomy is not complete or without limits, particularly when it involves the unique relationship between a mother and a child.  A mother has the affirmative moral and legal duty to protect her child. That relationship is different than that between your brother.

Even if by accident, the mother was responsible for that life to be created and as such has the moral and legal duty to provide what it needs to survive.  The fact that you think this duty arises upon birth doesn’t change the reality of the situation, nor does it change the moral principle involved.

Rather than dehumanizing women, it recognizes them for what they have always been and for  the moral obligations and duties that they have always had and that is to protect their children.   

Let me give you a thought experiment that you may have heard of- What if a woman was pregnant and had horrible nausea and the only drug that would help her was  thalidomide knowing that it would cause birth defects in her child.  With that knowledge she takes the drugs saying that it is her body and she has the right to do with it what she wants.  She takes the drugs and her child is born without arms.  Is she acting immoral?

What about the art student from Harvard, Aliza Shvart who wanted to include an aborted fetus in her art project so she specifically got pregnant and aborted the baby for that purpose.  Was she acting immoral?  Did she have the right to do that?

the moral obligations and duties that they have always had and that is to protect their children.

They are not children yet. You and a couple other boneheads keep using the word “dehumanizing,” they have to be people first. Clearly you think that they are people, even though they aren’t. YET. Abortions done before they have become a person are not dehumanizing anyone. “Dehumanizing” is such a dramatic term for someone who dehumanizes women. None of you seem to grasp the obvious and only go for the sentimental.

1). It’s not best practices, but plenty of babies are born addicted to something. People who do want a child presumably want it to remain on a developmental path to a healthy birth eventually, but it’s not always the case. As in the case of thalidomide, once it was discovered to be the cause of birth defects it was discontinued. But women dye their hair, have a bottle of beer now and then, and probably don’t get enough exercise. Are you going to force them to be better mothers? You also don’t care how good a mother is once her child is born. Good enough is good enough – you pro-lifers always want to take those kids and put them into “good” Christian homes as if a person who has gone “gotten herself” knocked up, if she doesn’t want a baby, will not emotionally suffer for that choice. You dramatize the guilt over an abortion of a thing that’s not even a person, but you think if a woman doesn’t want a kid, giving it away once it is a person would not even be painful. That makes you an oblivious sanctimonious pile of crap in my book. Fuck your “adoptions would be better”. You take away 99% of choice. People who can’t afford kids should just give them away like they are selling their old toaster at a garage sale. As if someone who would otherwise get an abortion must be so cold-hearted that, hey, what’s the difference.

So, yeah, if she wanted to take drugs, nobody’s going to stop her, and whatever comes out will be what she made up her mind. In the difference between a wanted child and an unwanted potential one, if she wanted it to develop arms and legs, she would be more prone to endure lots of other bullshit as practice for parenting. If she didn’t want to take care of a kid, then she should get an abortion before it becomes one.

2). Yes, of course.

I’ve taken the liberty to re-post the following because it became lost in the skinny squeeze formatting…

Nordog:

Well yes, of course.  But that evil came about because
people ascribed to the idea that man had the authority to deny the fundamental
rights of others, combined with the idea that they could create a better world
according to their lights.

Once people decide they can create the best good for the
most people and that they can do so by denying the rights of others as they see
fit, you get the atrocities I’ve mentioned.

Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness” makes for great
reading on this point btw.

Deven_Kale:

It’s not a question of denying rights, it’s a question of
when they are given. By the time a person is born, they have those rights, no
if’s, and’s or but’s. They cannot then be taken away, except in extreme cases
(murderers and the terminally ill, etc.).

Your atrocities are still immoral by any standard, unless
you ignore the suffering of individuals. While there are those people that do,
I am not one of them.

Nordog

“It’s not a question of denying rights, it’s a question
of when they are given.”

That’s rich.

You may as well say, “I’m not denying you your rights,
I’m just not giving them to you.”

And for the record, they are not my atrocities, they are my
examples of atrocities.

Deven_Kale

Except that it’s a ridiculous strawman argument, in that it
only has bearing at one single point in anyone’s life, when the mother
discovers she’s pregnant.

We’re not arguing semantics, don’t be churlish.

 Kodie, you are suffering from what is know as projection.  Or, put another way, you have accused me of doing that which I have not, but that you have done exceedingly frequently.

Again, your innate compassion and loving manner is sure to win many minds to your position that people develop from that which is the moral equivalent of a tick.

To observe that you are pathetic is not to dehumanize you.  In fact pathos is very humane concept.

In any event let us hope that you never have to kill any ticks.  I would hate to see you kill a baby by mistake.

 [Citation Needed]

I found several interesting citations on the case: 
Here is one:
http://www.thenation.com/article/pregnant-and-dangerous

Google 2004 Melissa Rowland

Spoiler: (Utah dropped the murder charge, and she never protested the c-section).

 The article you cited says that she did refuse to do the c-section and plead guilty to child endangerment for harm done to the children in her womb.  I guess the state of Utah does not agree with your absolute bodily autonomy claim.

I grew tomatoes for the science fair. What’s the difference?

You are really making way too much of a fetus to have the audacity to call anyone delusional. 

 You are a woman-hating authoritarian asshole who would love to see us all as nothing more than walking incubators for TEH BABBIES.

Who’s “dehumanizing” whom,  here?

 How, exactly, is it “depraved” to ensure that I am not adding to the overpopulation of the planet? How is it “depraved” to be a responsible adult, and make decisions about MY BODY, FOR MYSELF?

And how in the fuck is it “depraved” or “immoral” to put my physical and mental health ahead of, well, something squatting in my uterus? After all, if I don’t take care of myself, how am I supposed to take care of a baby?

I am very much NOT parent material, and I recognize this. I use birth control. And if I were to get pregnant, I would abort. Why? I’m on meds. Meds that might — I mean, I dunno for sure, but meds that could potentially result in a child with a disability or deformity. I, personally, would not want to be responsible for another person’s suffering.

What is truly depraved here is your insistence that a woman should, by virtue of having a uterus, be forced to remain pregnant even if it would kill her.

Mmm, yeah, “hysterical”.

Sexist asshat.

LOL.

 It’s not “murder”. Murder is when you take the life of a LIVING, BREATHING HUMAN BEING, i.e. one that has already been born. Disposing of a fetus is, legally, medically, ethically, and morally, no more a crime than disposing of a cancerous tumour.

I suspect, however, if you found a cancerous tumour, you’d be screaming to have it removed. Even though it has the same level of sentience as a fetus… Hypocrite.

Jackass.

Again, re-posting to reclaim for the skinny formatting…

******

Nordog6561:

“What is truly depraved here is your insistence that a
woman should, by virtue of having a uterus, be forced to remain pregnant even
if it would kill her.”

No, your depravity, in part, comes from the hysterical non
sequitur and erroneous conclusions about me like the one I’ve quoted here.

Again, I said, “…in part.”

wmdkitty:

Mmm, yeah, “hysterical”.

Sexist asshat.

Nordog6561:

LOL.

******

It bears noting that this is a case in which certain women are becoming so emotionally overwrought in making statments about their wombs.  

It’s funny because if there ever was a non-sexist and contextually appropriate use of the word “hysterical” this would be it.

[I am] calling for an unborn child to be given the same rights as all other living humans.

Be honest. Earlier you admitted that you are asking to give them more rights than everyone else. Namely the right to forcibly use another’s body against their will.

Rather than dehumanizing women, it recognizes them for what they have always been

In that one statement, you have inadvertently exposed your entire argument for what it really is. The implicit assumption that women are nothing more than baby carriers and abortion is them shirking their only real responsibility.

“In that one statement, you have inadvertently exposed your entire argument for what it really is. The implicit assumption that women are nothing more than baby carriers and abortion is them shirking their only real responsibility.”

Man, talk about obtuse reductionism with a double dose of non-sequitur.

A woman isn’t “nothing more” than anything, let alone a “baby carrier” just because she has natural moral obligation to protect her children.

Nordog6561:

It’s a funny thing, this non-human being without a heart, brain, and liver (to borrow from someone’s phrasing here, without sentience, without consciousness, and presumably without a will, that still has the physically ontological capacity to FORCIBLY USE something.

I’m not going to argue semantics with you. By “forcibly use” I mean “to utilize through the implementation of force*, either physical or otherwise, including legal.” This should have been obvious.

*force: noun /fȯrs/
3: violence, compulsion, or constraint exerted upon or against a person or thing.

edit: formatting

Okay, let me rephrase…

It’s a funny thing, this non-human being without a heart, brain, and liver (to borrow from someone’s phrasing here, without sentience, without consciousness, and presumably without a will, that still has the physically ontological capacity to utilize through the implementation of force, either physical or otherwise, including legal, upon somthing.It’s as if you just whip out the word semantic when you are presented with a distintction you either do not understand or that you find, ah, inconvenient.  I suspect the former inasmuch as my point had nothing to do with any finer formal definition of “force”  and everything to do with your assertion that something not afforded more dignity than a clump of cells is in some way an agent of some action.

 It’s a compulsion to defend the rights of women. I will tell you to fuck off for as long as you argue against the rights of women. Especially when you make arguments like you and rw have in this thread that say rape victims should be held responsible for carrying the fetus of their rapists, and then also claim that if I don’t want to be pregnant, then I should have sex. Which is it? If consent to sex is consent to pregnancy, then a rape victim never consented and therefore should have a right to expel the fetus from her body.

By claiming that I don’t understand the “unique relationship” a woman has with her unborn child (if she wishes to carry it to term, I’ll accept that terminology), you were presuming to know what I’ve been through in life. Now, go adopt some children, fight for easier access to birth control and comprehensive sex education, and then I might believe that you care even a little bit about saving the lives of children. Until then, it’s safe to assume that you actually only care about controlling those dirty sluts (even the dirty sluts who didn’t choose to have sex in the first place).

And you forgot to argue against women’s rights for one post. People forget things sometimes. 

A mother would never be forced to donate an organ/blood/plasma to aher child though. Why should she be forced to donate her entire body and sufferer further affectsfrom the pregnancy to a fetus? You are giving fetuses more rights

It is indicative of the standard of medical care. They asked me if I wanted an ultrasound. In my case, the ultrasound was not medically necessary, it was standard medical care to ask my permission. In fact, even if a procedure is medically necessary doctors are supposed to ask your permission before performing the procedure. If this is not what is normally odne, then a lot of doctors should get their medical license revoked.

Wouldn’t you get emotional if someone were fighting to take away your rights?? This is so insulting. It reminds of something:

A white guy at work made a racist comment about one of his tables (I won’t repeat it here, it was very bad though). A black server told him where he should put his comment and the white guy got indignant at the fact that a black man would be upset by a racist comment. Then he pointed to the black server’s anger as proof that what he said was true. Seriously, he made a disparaging comment about an entire race and then was surprised (and used as evidence against that race) when somebody got mad about it.

^^This is what I think of when people (usually men) make statements like this:
“It bears noting that this is a case in which certain women are becoming
so emotionally overwrought in making statments about their wombs.”

after arguing for almost a week against women’s rights. We get emotional because we know what happens to women when abortion is illegal. We know what happens to families when abortion is illegal. We know what happens to children when abortion is illegal. And we know the chilling affects illegalizing abortion has on other issues with women’s rights. Pardon me if I get emotional over somebody trying to enslave me to my bodily functions.

Wouldn’t you be angry and emotional if somebody was arguing to take away your rights? Even if you don’t see it this way, we do. The least you could do is say,”I understand why you’re angry, but this is why I disagree.” Instead you’ve chosen to ignore the many possible reasons why your arguments might piss us off (many of these reasons have already been spelled out) and use our anger as an example of “a non-sexist and contextually appropriate use of the word ‘hysterical'” Yeah, pretty much the same thing as a racist using a black man’s anger at racism as proof that the “angry black man” stereotype is true. You don’t have to agree with us, but you should at least have the decency and empathy to understand why we might be angry, and not try to use that anger against us.

You seem to be suffering from some sort of projection here. It’s a very simple statement that you seem willfully unable to comprehend.

Rwlawoffice has presented an argument where a “non-human being without a heart, brain, and liver” has the right to utilize the body of a woman without her consent. The application of force must then be used against the woman in order that your “non-human being” may live. Whether or not this “non-human being” is the one applying it is irrelevant.

As I said, I’m not going to argue semantics with you, regardless of your understanding of the word. Whether or not you can understand that an application of force can be enacted on behalf of another being is irrelevant as well. Just in case though, consider the example of the Bald Eagle. If I were to shoot one* and be seen by the proper authority while doing so, I could be put in prison. The only beings directly involved are me and the Eagle, but the being which applied the force of law onto me was (probably) the state. Legal force applied by one on behalf of another.

*If it makes you feel better, we’ll say the imaginary Eagle lived and I just clipped it’s wing. It was back to normal within days.

Or at least that’s the version settled on by clerics belonging to a Jewish reformation movement known today as Christianity. The notion that Jesus was a man, the Son of God and God himself would have sounded silly to Xtians of the 1st, 2nd and even much of the 3rd century until a certain Roman emperor saw the value in monotheism as a way to reunify his subjects by telling them that he, the Emperor, was now the One God’s choice to rule over His earthly domain while Jesus Christ, Lord God attended to more ethereal issues Above. This act of politically motivated “conversion” served to demote the many powerful pagan priesthoods into ones that must recognize the superior status clerics of his new Roman Church had when judging matters of a religious nature. Just himself and Jesus as co-rulers of both heaven and earth, with all other gods, including their priesthoods, their power, property….all hopefully submitting to this New World Order he’d created and thereby saving his fragile empire from collapsing into mini-states worshiping different gods. 

As you do know, Constantine was the very last Roman emperor to exist. His feigned conversion (as revealed by contemporary monuments that continue paying homage to Sol, himself of course, and almost as an afterthought, or even not at all, to Jesus Christ.  

But what you don’t know is anything about Christ that hasn’t come down to you in a manner transformed by politics, power, and the desire of kings, popes, bigots and fools hoping to gain an edge over believers in gods and other supernatural explanations for what is ultimately, very natural events.

Belief in the imminent arrival of a messiah who would save the Jews from the torment of being ruled from afar by an emperor who worshiped differently than they (gasp! the horror…!) was rampant throughout Palestine at the time.  as such, Jewish moms declaring their brat “the Messiah!” were commonplace.  The conservative Jews had favorites, the reformers theirs (of whom Jesus was likely one of their horses), the militant types bet the house on this bar Kochba fellow. All that got them was the final destruction of the Temple and a bus ticket stamped “Diaspora”.  

As mentioned above, Saul or Paul took the criucifixation of one of these belligerents and used it as the outline for a then-cult that all scholars agree had more to do with Paul than it did with anything the actual Jesus may have said or wanted….which of course is the reason why western or Roman Christianity is often referred to as “Pauline”  Christianity. 

 Quite alot happens between conception and birth, but one thing that doesn’t change is at the beginning of the process and and the end, there is a human life being developed.  At no time does it change from anything other than a human life. So if you do not think that this life starts at conception, when does it start?  Is it at ten days when there is the first signs of a heart beat?  Is it at two weeks when there are the first signs of brain activity? is it at three months when all of the internal organs are present?  When is it? Because at some point, if you support abortion, you are saying that a human life is being stopped.  

Actually, your conclusion does not follow and is false.  But let us grant that it is accurate.

The question then is really, why would any of that justify shoving scissors into the skull of a baby and suctioning out his brains?  Or taking a just delivered live breathing baby and throwing it into a bucket of water to drown because the mother wanted autonomy?

But hey, because people die by nature you seem to think that killing human beings is justified.

I mean, that really is the gist of your statement.  It’s meant as some type of reductio ad absurdum in which the charge that abortion kills human beings is rendered moot because nature kills human beings.

That’s like saying “Since whole families die in earthquakes (or the snarky version: …since God kills people with earthquakes) then you can’t object to me killing whole families.”

The depths of blatherskite to which pro-aborts will descend in order to justify sacraficing babies to the idol of “autonomy” is truly astounding.

 Actually, that is not true.  I know about Christ from reading the Bible which has nothing to do with Constantine or the Roman Catholic church.  In fact, it was written completely prior to 1oo ad or so.  Two hundred years prior to Constantine.

 Because at the time the fetus is in the mother’s womb, its survival is dependent entirely upon her alone for survival.  Afterwards, others can provide what the baby needs to survive.  But, the moral argument is the same- a mother has the moral and affirmative duty to protect and ensure their child’s survival, even if that child was conceived by accident.  If you think that this gives the fetus more rights than the mother then you do so only because you do not believe that they both have the right to life. I view it as giving them the same rights- the right to be alive.

 Assume for the sake of your argument that it is a permanent loss of bodily autonomy.  So what.  The loss of life for the fetus is permanent as well.  

The problem is you keep insisting it is a child, when it is not. So your deluded opinion on a woman’s responsibility for not-a-child has no bearing.

 Nordog’s response is spot on.

 Sorry Kodie, the fact that you don’t think it is a child, doesn’t change the fact that it is.  it is not a tumor, it is not a tick, it is not a flea.  It is a child.  Here is a picture of one just in case you are confused;

Since your position is that it is not a child until it is born  I thought I would give you a baby at 20 weeks after conception;

http://www.medicinenet.com/fetal_development_pictures_slideshow/article.html

The only difference between this ans a fetus a few weeks earlier is time.

If you do not think this is a child, there is no hope for you.

 I don’t think that’s a child. I guess that gives you license to judge me as unfit to be a human. The only thing between this and getting on with your life is an abortion, that’s what I see. 20 weeks is kind of late for an abortion, after all, and you guys are all about instigating delay until it can be more disputable, but if you think the 8 week one is a baby, there is no hope for you. When people want to be pregnant, they begin to use their strong emotions and projections to care for it and plan for it, as it will become a baby, like you said, in time.

Ok, I’ve been reading a lot of these posts that you are vigorously posting and responding to. I can’t quite understand why you keep calling embryos “human beings.” It is only true that they are the raw material that will soon develop into a biologically independent human being, they are not one at the time when they are a ball of cells. I think someone earlier said that the traditional view of a human being is one that has thoughts, opinions, dreams, memories, etc. So wouldn’t the so-called rights be more appropriate to apply to the mother carrying the ball of cells (which will be biologically dependent on her until birth) than the ball of cells itself?  I’m totally aware that one day, it will be a human being (in the way that most of us think when we think of that term) but you just cannot convince me that  it is one until it pops out of the womb! And even if it is, the rights of its mother (in my mind) will ALWAYS, ALWAYS trump those of the fetus (who can’t even speak or think for itself until WAY after birth.)

Yes, they always like to reduce the pro-choice woman equivalent to a slave-holder who wants to argue their negroes aren’t really people as long as it serves their personal interest. And then accuse us of posing non sequiturs, because the only thing that keeps a fetus from enjoying a human life is time.  It’s not their race, but over time, the story goes, a man might cajole a woman into being his fucking partner but the missed period is hers to be blamed for for dropping her pants. No credit for sexual beings in the current time of science. Let’s hold them back to a moral obligation to motherhood despite being not willing, and never bring the male of the species to blame for buying her drinks and getting her to blush.

Kodie, you’re the one judging others as non-human.  It’s become such an inegral part of your thinking you automatically assume that someone you disagrees with you sees you unfit to be human.

For the record:

Ghouls can be human beings.
Repugnant individuals can be human beings.
Worshipers of the self and “autonomy” can be human beings.
Willful killers of babies can be human beings.

However:

Ticks cannot be human beings.
Salt shakers cannot be human.
Amputated or otherwise removed human parts cannot be human.

Calling someone one of the things in the former group is not dehumanizing.  It might be wrong, rude, or scandalous, but it is not dehumanizing.  All of the things in the fomrer group are indeed part of the human experience.

The things in the latter group however do become dehumanizing elements when applied, as you have applied them, to human beings.

From the moment of conception until a death at the age of 96, a human being has been a unique individual human being for that entire time.  Changing only in ways of development and maturation.

The single, substantive change event happens at conception.

Willfully denying this fact in order to have the right to throw babies into buckets of water to drown is incredibly wicked (but being incredibly wicked is too a part of the human experience, just not a good one).

 Maria, I  do not see the distinction between what a baby becomes after the passage of time and what it is now.  It is a human being from start to finish.  I do not logically see the reason to call a fetus less than a human being just because it is small and still developing.  The only real reason  to do that would be to dehumanize it so it can be killed without remorse or a second thought.  People who believe that fetus’ are humans prior to their birth mourn their loss.  I did when my wife and i lost a child by miscarriage. 

If you don’t think that it is a human until it is born, then you are making an artificial distinction with the only real difference is its no longer physically attached to its mother.  it has its own dna, its own physical actions, it can be a different sex than its mother, it is awake when she is asleep, it can even have its own separate diseases.

The reason the rights of the fetus trump the rights of the mother is for the very reason you have stated- it can’t speak for itself, it can’t protect itself, so others must protect it on its behalf.  Others must give it a voice.  Just like we do with children after they are born. 

 So it looks like a baby. You’re trying to make an appeal to emotion when the fact is you have no real argument in the first place. You’re trying to use a picture rather than coming up with actual evidence to prove that there is reason to think, at this stage, that child has any consciousness to speak of. And without that evidence, yes it is just a collection of cells. One that happens to look like a human, yes, but just cells nonetheless.

Again, at this stage, from the evidence that I have seen thus far, it is no more terrible than had she used proper birth control in the first place. Until you can submit evidence that this child even had the capacity to suffer, hell I’ll even say capacity to experience anything, then there is nothing at all wrong with what was done here.

In this case, you gone from…

“Be honest. Earlier you admitted that you are asking to give them
more rights than everyone else. Namely the right to forcibly use
another’s body against their will.”

…in which the human unborn baby is the agent of the action to…

.. some other agen altogethert, presumbably police.

It is possible that my understanding of sentence structure is less than perfect, I will admit to that. But the flaw in your response is that, possibly flawed grammar aside, I never even once claimed that the child would be the one applying the force, that is simply your interpretation. I was simply stating that Rw is wanting to give the unborn the right to use the body of a woman against her will, through force if necessary. Again, who applies the force is irrelevant.

When you accuse someone of using force, then that accusation falls when
it is learned that someone else entirely is really the agent of that
force.

Again, I never said it was the child applying the force, that was simply your interpretation. If that was a grammatical mistake on my part, fine, but never my intention.

In any event, the real inabilty to grasp fundamental distinctions is the abject denial that we are talking about a human being.

Actually that’s what the real argument, at it’s core, is about. Whether or not it should be considered human and, if so, what that means. This was not part of any of the debates I was making though, and therefore tangent to anything I’ve been saying.

We are talking about people who steadfastly refuses to support
legislation that would protect living breathing human babies outside the
womb after a botched abortion simply because some woman’s fantasy of
autonomy dictates that she can kill her baby. So the baby is thrown
into a bucket of water to drown.

Ah yes, the baby in the bucket picture being thrown around the internet as a “botched abortion.” In fact it is not a botched abortion. In fact, that’s a picture of one of the possible outcomes of a person in China having a child in Hospital when they already have a registered child. I agree, it should not happen.

You want to agrue about blastocysts and zygotes and spontaneous
miscarraiges? Fine. They are admittedly the hard cases for the
pro-lifer. Of course, that’s why pro-aborts want to focus on them.

Actually I don’t focus on them, partly because those are likely never the subject of induced abortions, but also because the developmental stage means nothing to me. What does matter to me is not within the scope of this discussion, right now you’re in a discussion about rights and whether or not anybody should have them.

The fact of the matter is that pro-abortion types are ghouls. They
worship at the altar of their own navel. They must so totally deny the
humanity of that which they seek to destroy so that they can continue
the wholesale destruction.

The reason I’m for abortion has nothing to do with autonomy and everything to do with morality. There are obvious cases where abortion would definitely have been the right choice but it was not done. No, I am not talking about uncontrollable birth defects such as Downs Syndrome or it’s like. I’m talking about severe cases of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse where the child eventually suicides or is killed. I’m talking about kids being bounced around in foster homes for their entire childhood who are permanently scarred by it. I’m talking about kids such as those in Rw’s supposed family orphanage who never know what it’s like to be truely loved. Yes, never having been born is quite often better than those options.

All of which completely ignores the central point I was making…. The assumption that an actual, living person somehow magically appears simply because haploid DNA strands exist within the same cell wall. How? Why? Where is it? How can it function without even the most fundamental structures we know are common to ALL life forms? (the fact that this gamete is “alive” means nothing since both the sperm and egg cell were alive as well…and can even live for a short time outside the their donor’s body!” 

To assume a fertilized embryo contains a living person is identical to believing an acorn contains within it an oak tree,; that an omelet recipe says to use “1 Flock of Chickens”.  

Yes, an embryo has the POTENTIAL to develop into an independent life that is deserving of all the legal protection our laws can give it. 
But potential life is not ACTUAL life. 

You may have the POTENTIAL to win the Boston Marathon, but that does not give you the right to claim you ACTUALLY did win the BM, right? So how can you claim that a near-microscopic clump of undifferentiated cells that contain DNA instructions ONLY for developing a template upon which yet more chemicals and RNA “sub-routines” can react in a series of complicated processes might EVENTUALLY … but only if a million things happen to go just right! –  develop all the  organs whose presence we know is absolutely necessary to sustain human life? 
  
The only way you can win this argument is to continue insisting that your churches teachings on this matter are true despite no evidence for and plenty against….including my point that it would seem exceptionally cruel if the god of your beliefs was one that  created a life-or-death gauntlet course all new lives must blindly navigate or be flushed down the toilet. Such a notion is completely at odds with everything else you claim for Him, yet that somehow escapes even a moments reflection by you.  

And THAT has rigid, inflexible mind typical of the authoritarian follower (or RWA: Altemeyer) written all over it. How sad.

 And yet you still, even after all of your rants and fallacious arguments, have yet to show why exactly it is that all of our arguments are specious and subjective while yours is not. It is very much arbitrary to state that the joining of two gametes (haploid cells as I believe mycos put it) into a zygote (single diploid cell) is somehow the magic moment when it becomes worthy of protection.

Even if that is the case, which you argue it is, then are all of the times that a zygote turned blastocyst fails to implant to be considered negligent homicide? At what point does this natural process become immoral and/or illegal? Even an implanted blastocyst can, and often does, spontaneously abort with no actions from anyone, is that also to be negligent homicide?

What I meant earlier when I mentioned that Rw (and you, actually) have no argument is that all you are doing is arguing from assertion. You have asserted that they should be considered human at conception, because they just are. All of your arguments afterwards become ad hoc arguments themselves to further your own immoral cause of forced birth.

The general consensus is that there must be something more concrete than having a single cell with a complete genetic blueprint in order for it be considered alive and worthy of the protections granted by local customs. The agreed upon time in the US is when it can be considered to be aware and have it’s own choices, experiences, and feelings (what most would call, “consciousness”). That is, when the brain is developed enough to allow those things to happen. Most experts on the subject would agree that this happens somewhere between gestational weeks 23 and 31, or around the beginning of the third trimester.

Fortunately for everyone (including many of the unborn), it doesn’t really matter if you like this or not, it’s luckily the way things just are. Existential argumentation aside, at the end of the day the most moral acts almost always win out over religion and/or bigotry. Your belief that a woman absolutely must become nothing more than a complicated life support system simply because you arbitrarily believe that the joining of two germ cells makes something a person means nothing in the real world.

Um, yeah, after she was killed she wouldn’t be able to care, just as she wasn’t able to care before she was born.

Since I have no idea whether or not this thread is suffering spaghettification, I have decide to respond with a new comment. You’ll find my counter-arguments there.

Deven,

I could not locate your new post to continue so I will post here.

Your notion that DNA only describes our physical appearance begs the question. Our DNA is more than just our physical appearance. It is what makes us human beings as opposed to other species and we all know what that entails.  To understand that and then deny that it doesn’t count until the development reaches a certain point is to simply deny that it is human until a certain point. So you are then left with what I described, qualifying different determinations of personhood. Which in my opinion makes the position of abortion morally reprehensible.   

Your thinking is repugnant.  Utterly repugnant.

It’s the same thinking the leads to the gas chambers and ovens.

 I did not read that he was offended, just that he accurately described your thinking.  It is repugnant.  But than, you have already shown your level of morality in this discussion so none of us are surprised.

 No, you said nothing about DNA. What you said was that the fact that it was a Homo Sapiens is what made it human. Homo Sapiens is a species classification, a description of physical characteristics used to differentiate one animal from others which cannot reproduce with it. Now you’re changing your argument from that of species to that of DNA.

Which really makes no difference anyway. As others have pointed out here, just human DNA is still no reason to protect it. Many others have asked you about cancer cells. They also contain human DNA and yet anybody who has them would do their best to kill them all without any moral concerns. You yourself would do the same. That proves that simply containing human DNA is also not a reason for greater protections than cancer cells. There must be something more than that. I argue that the “something more” that everybody, including you, is actually looking for is the philosophical idea of “personhood,” which begins when that child gains the capacity for consciousness.

To understand that and then deny that it doesn’t count until the
development reaches a certain point is to simply deny that it is human
until a certain point

I do not deny that it’s human. If human is simply a question of DNA or physicality, then I definitely don’t deny it. By your definition of human a cancer cell is also human, as well as shed skin and toenails. Whether or not it fits your definition of “human” still does not mean that it deserves protection. As I said above, a collection of cells must have more than just human DNA in order to be protected.

You and Nordog accuse me (and others) of making up Ad Hoc arguments purely in order to support abortion, where it really is the two of you who do so to force birth. When we try and apply your logic universally, such as in the case of cancer or toenails, you state that we’re being ridiculous and trying to be deliberately deceptive. When we point out that you use different logic in order to determine the value of a life after birth, you completely ignore it.

Now tell me, who’s really being deceptive? Who’s really got the Ad Hoc arguments? And even worse, based on previous comments and arguments of myself and others, Which position really has the moral high ground: Pro-choice, which recognizes some lives are better off never beginning, or forced birth, where the suffering and abuse of those children who should have been aborted means nothing at all?

 I can agree with that, the discussion has pretty much run it’s course. We are no longer making any fresh arguments. I would just like to say two things though, and I’ll be finished. Well, unless you write a massive monologue type response on the assumption that I’m not going to respond to it, as I’ve been known to do myself. 😉

First, you must first base this argument on the unproven and biased idea
that the life has not already begun, when even scientifically it has. 

I wasn’t speaking of life in terms of “a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings,” so much as, “the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual.” Considering the philosophical nature of my arguments, I’m surprised you didn’t catch that. 😉

Second, you must base it on the unproven notion that any abortion
prevented leads to an abused child.

I wasn’t presupposing that all abortions prevented would have ended in abuse, but that any abortion prevented could have done so. The primary reason that I believe it should be a womans right to decide to abort the child is because she should be able to prevent that child from being born into that life without having to explain why to anyone else. I also have just enough faith in humanity to believe that this is the primary reason why most abortions are performed.

 Nice poor job trying to change the subject, and with the emotional appeals.

By which of course I mean, “piss poor job”. Jesus, blastocysts and embryos are not even close to babies. Even fetuses barely RESEMBLE them. Read a book.

 Protecting people from invisible monsters is not generally regarded as selfless, but as Quixotic at best. It also appears to have failed utterly even if we start with the premise that it’s true, since people would then still be being punished eternally for the finite sins that Jesus was supposed to have absorbed in the matter of a sacrificial goat (a myth drawn from numerous older religions, by the way.)

 it really is hard to have a conversation with you regarding Christianity when your understanding of it is so wrong. 

Why is it that when people debate abortion they never bring up the right of a woman to the use of her own body? Men never face using their bodies to grow human beings. Watching someone else do it will never make any man understand what a huge thing it is to have a baby. For the mother that is just the beginning.  She will be responsible for that person for the rest of her life. The only way anyone could think it would be right to force a woman to carry a baby for nine months against her will, would be if they considered women to be sub-human, not having even most basic human rights.  People who are pro-coat hanger should be after the government to support research for birth control that always works. Our children should be educated on how to use it and have it readily available to them.

Why is it that when people debate abortion they never bring up the right of a woman to the use of her own body?

Two things:
1) It has been brought up in this particular debate, numerous times (as Nordog stated with his “100 times” comment).
2) The reason it’s not brought up is because, ultimately, it’s a useless argument. The question is not really about whether or not the woman has a right to bodily autonomy. Among other things, it’s about whether or not her right to autonomy trumps any right to life the developing child may have.

There are many arguments for abortion that are much better than the bodily autonomy argument. It’s best to stick with the ones that actually have greater impact on the rights of the child in the first place. Bodily autonomy is an argument for those whose arguments lack any substantial depth, and it almost always fails in any debate once it’s brought up.

 In a sense, you’re right. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the argument fails so often.

“If you don’t want to have an abortion, if you believe in souls and that you have a duty to protect them, DON’T HAVE ONE.”

This is brilliant.  You realize that don’t you?  Simply brilliant.

“On a separate note, I know another woman who was conceived in rape who is also a Republican, Pro-Life hypocrite as a result….however, forgive me for saying, she is exceptionally, almost shockingly ugly, and Hispanic. I wonder how far this campaign would get if she was the poster child.”

This is compassion.  You realize that don’t you?  Utter compassion.

It’s as if your fatuousness got into a race with your bigotry and it was a photo finish.

A human being “in development” is not the same as an actual viable being separate from a woman’s body.  It is alive only as long as the woman is alive until a viability threshold is reached.  But to follow the general arguments I’ve seen in several posts here…

If a woman’s health is threatened by continuing a pregnancy?  Is that still murder?  Or is it self-defense?  Are women required to take on all physical and mental risks associated with pregnancy simply because they were raped or birth control failed?  What is the distinction that removed a woman’s right to make medical decisions for herself?Yes, I’ve heard the “you had a choice when you had sex” argument and it basically boils down to:  You’re a slut.  Deal with it.  It serves little purpose beyond trying to shame the woman for having sex. 

DNA established at fertilization may identify the zygote as having human DNA, but it does not establish those cells as a person capable of living outside the uterus.  I would give the argument much more credit if people would at least be honest enough to admit that prior to implantation, there is no pregnancy.  Cell division is an automatic process and is dependent upon the maternal cellular structures contained within the egg to replicate DNA, create proteins, or process energy.  In order to make it down the tubes to the uterus, that DNA is completely dependent upon the maternal cell “machinery” and raw materials to keep cells dividing. 

A few weeks ago, my husband asked me what the medical distinction is between a miscarriage and a still birth.  Simple–viability.  If the fetus was developed enough to potentially live on its own but was delivered already dead, it’s a stillbirth.  If not, then you’ve had a spontaneous abortion..or miscarriage. 

Just stating that “life” begins at conception does not establish a valid reason for attaching a  designation of “personhood” or an endowment of rights that may or may not be compatible with the rights of the woman involved. 

“But didn’t YOU choose to support your argument with an extreme example?”

Yes, it’s called fighting an extreme example with the opposite extreme example.

Yet both extreme examples still represent the killing of a human being.

You must forgive me if I don’t take much solace in your claim, “The vast majority of abortions do not involve “shoving scissors into the skull.” They are generally just a matter of suctioning out an embryo about the size of your thumb.”

One is still left with the shoving of scissors and the suctioning of brains.

You complain that this is an appeal to emotion as if that is mutually exclusive from the truth of the matter.

And the truth of the matter is that if such cases do not move one’s emotions, one has likely lost an important aspect of their humanity.

Nordog, why did you take the bait and let somebody resurrect this discussion? Now I have to join in and correct you again….  *sigh*

Yet, I’ve seen little response, if any, to the other examples of
extremely late term abortions like Partial Birth Abortion, and the
outright infanticide of killing actual babies outside the womb.

You’ve been given the response those examples deserve. I believe you’re talking about the United States, where your examples are already completely illegal and do not happen. If you have examples of when PBA does happen and is not prosecuted, I will guarantee you they were extremely rare and unusual circumstances. Although I will most likely agree with you in that they should not be happening at all.

If you’re referring to drowning babies in buckets again, I will repeat: That is something that, to my knowledge, is not done here in the United States. That is something reprehensible that is done in China due to their one child per family law.

Edit: wrong acronym.

 “Nordog, why did you take the bait and let somebody resurrect this
discussion? Now I have to join in and correct you again….  *sigh*”

LOL!  Sorry my friend.

“I believe you’re talking about the United States, where your examples
are already completely illegal and do not happen. If you have examples
of when PBA does happen and is not prosecuted, I will guarantee you they
were extremely rare and unusual circumstances. Although I will most
likely agree with you in that they should not be happening at all.”

Admittedly I am not up to speed on the exact nature of the statues regarding these “procedures”.  I do know that the current American president has opposed legislation to make PBA and post-birth-failed-abortion-infanticide illegal.

But all this really kinda misses the original point of my mentioning them in the previous discussions.

The complaint and claim that the blastocyst/zygote/etc. is obviously not a human baby is presented as an argument in favor of abortion.  It is important to note that, even if true, that complaint and claim bears no relevance to the cases of extremely late term abortions and infanticide that do happen regardless of what the current statutes happen to be.  Additionally, as mentioned, statutes prohibiting these things are opposed categorically by some on the pro-abort side.

It is nice to reflect that you likely think these types of things shouldn’t happen at all.

FTR, I am not one who opposes a procedure to save the life of the mother simply because a child my die.

What I do oppose is a procedure that is considered a failure if a child lives.  That’s not medicine.  That’s killings.

And while I oppose euthanasia for people, it seem appropriate for this comment thread.

If you are compelled to respond again I will try to give you the last word (but I can’t promise).  😉

Best to you.

are you fucking kidding me?? Every women has the right to make her own decision for her own body. Rape is a crime… and your mentally fucked afterwards….then you get pregnant as a result of it and you want the government to tell you that you cannot abort the pregnancy???good for your mom Rebecca…you did hear her say that if she had the choice back then she would have had an abortion, right? Luckily for you she didnt have that choice then. But i’ll be dammned if anyone can tell me what the fuck to do with my body and the child that is growing inside it.