Horror of Abortion!

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@Vexcalibur

You're logic is at odds with itself. If human personhood begins when one has a functioning brain, your first absolute position and a person has the right to do with their body what they will, your second absolute. Then it follows that one will necessarily conflict with the other. Perhaps you should reevaluate you presuppositions before you post in response to Gedrene.

FYI, if you want less abortions then get a woman to listen to the Child's heartbeat; 78% of women who hear it will not go through with an abortion.

I personally stand by Vex's side here. But I also dislike irresponsible people that resort to abortion as an exclusive mean of contraception, like you guys said. However I would make exceptions for rape and other cases that might threaten the mother's life

(I mean, if the baby can't even have his mom, what gives? Most people who had a baby will tell you it takes two to tango, and unless the dad is devoted, it's usually pretty hard on the guys to handle.)

Anyways, i'm not going to stick around this debate any longer. -.-

Hey look! A post that shows that 91 fails at logic. This is the least surprising event in the whole year.

Good for them. They are exercising their own rights to do what they want with their bodies.

That doesn't mean the 22% other women have any less right to abort.


Yes, but do they exist? Ok, they do, but they tend to come from irresponsible men that force their couples to have irresponsible sex and then to abort. The solution there is to be consistent and teach the women that they own their bodies. Let them leave the idiot.

In many other cases it is about lack of information and/or access to contraception. Unfortunately, the "pro-life" people tend also to be against making contraception (and information) more widely available. And thus they are as unhelpful as heck. I mean, oppose the means to prevent abortions and then criminalize abortion.

@ Vex

If a child has a functioning brain, thus qualifying in your view as alive with a right to live, yet still resides within the womb. How then does this not conflict with the woman's right to kill it? Please, professor, explain to me, he who by your claim understands little logic, how these two entities can possess both rights at the same time, without conflict.

The heart and shape arguments are ones that joker made, not me. As for whether something is a human being it's clear. If it's part of a normal human life cycle then it's an individual, thus a human being. Saying that a human zygote isn't a human being because it's rediculous is an argument from incredulity, a logical fallacy.

Human consciousness is what makes something a person and deserving of an undeniable right to live. A 20 weeks fetus is physically unable to have such thing.


That isn't what I said. I said that Oodain is wrong in saying that all human foetuses don't have a consciousness. This is nonetheless irrelevant as to why I think a human foetus should be protected as you can tell when I said first: no it isn't.


Could you stop trying the drag the definition from human to people? Rights are enumerated to humans, not people for a start. Also no, it isn't designed on DNA. DNA plays a part in defining the matter but it isn't the be all and end all. And again the argument from incredulity with the Zygote. Please stop using it. It's incredibly obvious that it's just you icapable of making a leap. Any human zygote that is undergoing a natural growth cycle in to a full grown human baby is an individual human being. Ergo it should be treated as such.


Erm of course. Which is why I said to save a life or to deal with rape it's really okay on what the woman chooses.


Since when did you become a hypocritical pangloss? You say a zygote or indeed a foetus doesn't matter early in the pregnancy but then you go on and try to portray this as if it's a heart-rending decision for the woman. Can you at least be consistent?
You can only pick one choice between whether abortion is a necessary evil or that it doesn't matter at a certain stage.
Furthermore your inability to accept that some women may just be motivated by self-interest in abortion and not the rights of a child is incredibly naive. Women are Humans. They can be just as bad as anyone else.


Aye, but it's certainly several magnitudes more effective than the number of abortions suggests.


Read my above comments.


Where did you pick that from? Selective quotation methinks.

Last time I checked a foetus isn't its mother's body. So yeah...


Not when it conflicts with the right of a Human to live. A few people will tell you that doing something wrong will often involve using shortcuts.


Now we are going in to the realms of speculation fallacy. Positive speculation fallacy it must be said, but still just the same.


Exactly how many extraneous circumstances do you have to fit in to your examples before they sound plausible?





Good, which has nothing to do with any of this since a human being is any human that lives. Last time I checkes a human zygote is human.


But that has nothing to do with the example I have. because a foetus is still a human in a life cycle, which has nothing to do with a brain. A life cycle doesn't start when the brain develops. So yeah, again you're wrong.


But many times it isn't a last resort procedure. it was the first thing people thought up of. So what then?



And yet you accept the cheap and easy option of allowing foetuses to die under the reason that they are not people. Not only is this about Humans and not 'people', a foetus is a human being because it's an individual which is easily identified as having the characteristics of a human at that stage of its life cycle.


You keep banging on about saying that a foetus isn't human because it doesn't have this or that, or some other arbitrary characteristic. Let me make it clear bub, a human zygote is a human at a very early part of its life cycle.


Yet these are none of the arguments I am making or talking about. You're so blinded by prejudice that you insist that your arbitrary definition of what is a human must be right, and you are replying to me with counters to arguments that joker made. You insist on fighting a battle that is based on a definition that helps you and isn't correct, and you can't tell the difference between different members of your opposition.


Yep, arriving at crazy town now.


You can't seem to even get it in to your skull that no other group of humans has the 'right' to end another human's life just because it is convenient. Infanticide is the closest comparison I can think of. And I hope you will agree that killing infants is quite disgusting. I am not removing anyone's right, I am giving Humans protection against arbitrary will. I think that more clearly comes under the definition of a right.


Maybe you shouldn't twist that one out of proportion like you have. DNA is just a protein that decides a set of instructions. What matters is that the DNA in a zygote defines the Zygote's species. That's the only point where DNA intersects with my argument. My argument is that a Human at the start of its life cycle has the right to live as much as a human in the middle of its life cycle.

What is unscientific is saying that a Human Zygote isn't a human and that a heart or a brain somehow defines something. It is like saying that the universe isn't the universe because it doesn't have starts in it. But at the start of the universe there weren't any stars. The fact remains that it's still the bloody universe.

Phil, I would like to point out that as I have already stated in cases of motherly health and rape, abortion is acceptable.

incidentally the earliest delivered baby to survive outside the womb is at the same time as consciousness starts to form (personally i would set the limit before the start to make absolutely sure, the laws of denmark does that)
at a time where the baby actually has a chance to live outside the womb i sure do hope the medical staff gives it as much care as they do the mother.

If we knew for certain, I may even agree with you. Basing the standard of life on consciousnesses assumes that we can determine it's existence or non-existence. For example the quantum theory of consciousnesses could be true and basing it on standard neurology would be to kill people. It is my basic view that with regards to life we should err on the side of extreme caution, if there is any doubt, we ought not to act. With regards to the viability standard it is only a matter of time before the case changes. Soon enough we will be able to deliver a child into this world far earlier. The viability standard will die, it is pretty much only a matter of time.

there are some limits that are certain today when dealing with conscoiusness, again the links have been provided a dozen times or more, search.

quantum consciousness has little basis when we can show that disrupting neurosyncronicity removes any chance of consciousness,
the reason there is a difference in a foetus is that before week twenty the structure for that neurosyncronicity isnt even in plac, it cant happen before then.

Not actually correct. If the theory of quantum consciousness (I selected as an example from a myriad of options) were correct, then it would be the case that consciousness existed but lacked the ability to be expressed. To declare from this that it did not exist, would be premature, since you would be mistaking the action of a thing, for the thing itself.

I am not moved.

I fully and unreservedly acknowledge a foetus as a living human being. I have direct, first hand experience with the clinical practice (during the obstetrical rotation of my residency). I acknowledge, unreservedly, that abortion extinguishes a human life.

But even in the face of all of that, I still support an unrestricted right of access to abortion for women before 20 weeks gestational age.

Plainly and simply it is a choice between a woman's right to life, liberty and security of the person, and the foetus' right to life, liberty and security of the person. Prior to 20 weeks gestational age, I choose the woman; after 20 weeks gestational age, I choose the foetus. Period. End of statement.

I don't rely on legalism about the definition of "person" or when legal rights crystalize. I don't rely on fine semantic discussions about foetal heartbeat or neural activity. My standard for decision is the threshhold of viability.

Conscuiousness forms before the point at which a foetus is viable.

That's a perfectly credible viewpoint but I would say that viability is a more legalistic viewpoint than whether we can define the organism at hand as being in a natural life cycle or similarity thereof, which sounds to be honest moralistic.

Your gross intellectual dishonesty is disturbing. Lecks position, from my viewpoint, seems to be about the fact that abortion itself isn't a fail-safe measure for the mother, rather than basing it on your fetus fetishistic illogic.

Regardless, next to no posts made against the fetus fetishists are "strawmen". They're merely logical extensions of the claims fetus fetishists have made, showing how they result in absurdities.

And, if you failed to read your opponents (which you did) you'd have known that most people aren't talking about humans as morally significant so much as persons.

Groos intellectual dishonesty? Where? I know very well that Lecks is saying that using abortion as a fail-safe measure isn't very clever. What I was congratulating was his lack of gross intellectual dishonesty, unlike yourself, in actually giving a DAMN REASON WHY HE FELT THE WAY HE DID THAT WAS BASED ON THE TRUTH. As for fetishistic logic, are we just trying to throw fancy words on a page or are you just suffering from a lack of gross intellectual capability?


Yes, now we're making insults up for the opposition because of course, Master Pedant can't actually seem to challenge us on sensible, reasonable grounds. So of course he acts like a Civil War democrat and calls me the abortion issue equivalent of a Black Republican. The arrogant fool.


Last time I checked it's called Human Rights not Person's rights. THe rights apply equal to all Humans because person is vague, and liable to be used to withhold rights from people who most obviously deserve protection. Quit trying to move the goalposts just because it's convenient for your argument.