Republicans succeed in ploy to increase unsafe abortions

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I think that you have it backwards. The exercise should not be, "what are the circumstances under which we will use the law to protect human life," but rather, "what are the circumstances under which we will not use the law to protect human life." The difference is the starting point--you seem to suggest that unless a human life falls within a prescribed category, the law should stay out. Whereas the other approach begins from the premise that we protect all human life, and then allow for exceptions. I much prefer the latter formulation, and I am comfortable that it accommodates my staunchly pro-choice views.

We all seem so concerned about finding the "slam-dunk" argument--the one that, in the words of Inuyasha, "totally destroys," the argument of those who disagree with us. We should all have learned long ago that no matter how convinced we are of accuracy of our own position, there is no argument that will irrefutably demonstrate that to a person who holds a contrary position.

Human behaviour is messy. Law is sloppy. There is precious little accuracy, let alone perfection, in how we well-order our societies. So let's acknowledge that the law is a flawed instrument.

If you oppose abortion--and there are good reasons for opposing it--then I am still left to wonder whether prohibition is the most effective approach. Surely preventing unwanted pregnancies is the more rational public policy approach. It may make parents squeamish to think of their teenagers being sexually active, but that squeamishness is nothing compared with the unbelievable burden of a pregnant teen.

By advocating welfare and socialized medicine it implies that you want the government to have a hand in your life that is outside the role of government. Government at ALL levels has a necessary purpose but is purpose, size, and power must be limited in a truly free society.
Freedom has its risks or it’s not really freedom.
I think I’ve covered this adequately enough. Go ahead and have your comeback but I’m done so no need to wait on anything from me.

So by advocating "freedom" you want corporations to run your life then?

There is no loss of freedom in wanting security. I am so tired of hearing that slogan from Republican candidates who have financial security that they have no fear of the future.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

You are missing my point, and/or you don't understand the definition of sentience. (Sentience is the ability to feel and react to one's environment, to have emotions; there is absolutely no reason to suspect that any vertebrate, nor most arthropods, nor many molluscs, lack this ability. Indeed, one has to go through some pretty extreme mental gyrations (ie, 'the screams of pain of a vivisected dog are nothing but squeaking gears out of allignment,' a la Descartes) to deny this fact.
Sapience, on the other hand: self-awareness, the ability to think and learn and contemplate the world, is a much fuzzier concept and one that can, depending on the definition, be more appropriately limited to more complex animals (including humans).) My point was that anyone who eats meat but protests the killing of something on the grounds of sentience is a hypocrite, not that eating meat is wrong or that killing animals is wrong. I'm not evangelical or self-righteous about my vegetarianism.
Whether or not you accept it, to me it is the most important factor in the equation.


I strongly disagree.

A zygote is never self-sustaining 'within the womb.' That's the entire point of being placental mammals.



Pain takes a system of neurons (cells). A single cell cannot, within itself, contain a system of other cells. Duh.

No, sorry, you're wrong. In case you haven't picked up on this fact before, I was trained as a biologist and you clearly do not know what you're talking about.


They have very mechanical chemotaxis and phototaxis mechanisms that causes them to move towards or away from various stimuli, but they do not have any comprehension of doing so. Even flatworms act on a very mechanistic level.

Sorry, you're wrong. Read a college-level biology textbook and then a college level zoology textbook, and get back to us, eh? In fact, you don't even have to read the entirety of the former, just the sections on responding to the environment and nervous systems and consciousness.

I think the best we can conclude is sentience/sapience have little to do with whether something is human or not and best left as a known attribute that humans do happen to possess--rather, there is more to being human than sentience/sapience, but primarily it inherits its humanity from human parents. If that is so, it is human and no amount of sentience/sapience or level of development keeps it from being human. Protecting one form of human life and not another is inconsistent. Disagree though I may on the pro-life/pro-choice issue, I think visagrunt nailed it in terms of how I feel about the whole thing. If it is human, it is a person. If that is not a good reason to end abortion, it is at least a good enough reason to question the necessity of it and suggest alternatives in most situations.

No problems here...


Right...


Still with you...


Whether sentient or sapient, or some combination of both...I don't see how it matters. We seem to at least agree on this point. Sentience is not grounds for protecting life, especially if people justify killing animals (which may be sentient and even sapient in varying degrees, though we may not be 100% clear about or in agreement over the extent to which other animals might be sapient relative to human beings). I suppose I see your point about someone being a hypocrite. Sentience would not be a very good basis for protecting the unborn, since many of us can justify killing other possibly sentient/sapient beings.

Which is why it is important to distinguish that it is HUMAN life we are compelled to protect. And if we generally seek to protect human life, then that protection should also extend to the unborn.


That's your prerogative.


No, that much is true. Once it is self-sustaining, technically it's considered an embryo. The placenta is merely a mechanism for providing nourishment to the embryo. It takes care of itself beyond that point--taking nourishment from the mother's body, dividing up cells, specialization, etc. And then it just grows and grows... It's no different outside the womb. Only the mechanism changes. Given that hunting/gathering doesn't seem to be an acquired trait by the age of 2, then according to the reasoning that a being is not human if it is not self-sustaining (without the aid of an adult, whether through the placenta or through a baby bottle), then it should be perfectly acceptable for parents to kill their toddlers; they cannot sustain themselves, ergo they are not human. But if we're compelled to ensure the survival of toddlers as best we can, then the same ought to apply to babies still within the womb. Level of development shouldn't matter.


But a single cell does contain a system of organelles and sub-cellular structures responsible for responding to the environment. Pain is merely a mechanism for responding to the environment in order to promote survival of the organism. There is no reason to think that the equivalent in single-cell organisms doesn't exist. How are we supposed to know that single-cell organisms do not respond to hazardous environmental factors in equivalent ways as we perceive pain?


Then you ought to know better. Cells are made up of internal structures that enable the cells to do what cells do.


Human beings even instinctively do things that they themselves don't comprehend. That our CNS is comprised of a network of innumerable cells seems to say to me that we have the same number of single cells working together to tell us what to do. Single cells may not be as complex as a system of cells, but they do show evidence of thinking. If you've developed a means of communicating with amoebas and have gotten an answer that amoebas don't know what they're doing, then great. But otherwise, you don't know what they're thinking or even if they're thinking at all (or not thinking at all, or whatever).


Baseless assertion. Once you show that single cells respond to stimuli, you show the building blocks of intelligence. Denial of primitive life forms' apparent ability to make decisions if for no other purpose than survival seems to me nothing more than wishful thinking that would justify the destruction of human life for self-centered purposes.

Bear in mind also that it is not my purpose to say all abortion ought to be ended. My main issue with abortion is the length to which it is deemed necessary.

My limited knowledge of single-celled organisms is at least so much that I know that single-cell organisms AT LEAST have basic structures that allow them to function if for no other reasons than to survive and reproduce. Apparently it doesn't take much to have a thought... I used to have a terrible problem with mice when I first moved to where I live now. Mice have significantly tinier brains than I do and yet are somehow just smart enough to outrun me, remember where the tough hiding places are, and avoid traps. Effective trap placement was a tricky task for me, but once I understood the habits of the mice, it wasn't uncommon to hear a couple of traps snap shut every night. The really depressing part was the one or two times a mouse lived just long enough to get out of the trap. I also got smart about putting out poison. But the point is outsmarting the mice was no easy effort, and we've been completely mouse-free this winter. Clearly it isn't brain size that matters, but rather that there is some equivalent mechanism that serves the same purpose. Single-celled beings are nothing more than master multi-taskers.

And even if I were to concede on appeal to authority that I'm wrong because you're a biologist and I'm not, that STILL doesn't change the fact, thinking or not, that an embryo is still human life. A human being in a persistent vegetative state is still considered a human being with a life worth protecting. So even if I were to allow that you are right and that a blastocyst is incapable of thinking, that changes nothing. If a human life is worth protecting at a stage of development in which there is little left to live for, then it is certainly worth protecting at a stage when it has everything to live for. If you want to insist on being inconsistent, then I'm afraid that's a matter between yourself and your conscience. I cannot help you there.

AngelRho, even basic biology should tell you that a cell can't feel anything, know anything, or do anything other than it's intended purpose.

Also, a small collection of cells in a womb is not a human.

Even if cells could suffer, we don't legally care about the suffering of cells. Cells and also pluricellular life forms die every single day. We even make it a point to sell toxins to kill some of these entities. Please do notice that flies' cells respond to stimuli.

But they're HUMAN cells! Like the ones I destroyed when I cut myself shaving the other day. That means I'm guilty of manslaughter, right?

Well, you can say the same thing for complex organisms, too. Single-cells and complex organisms all respond to stimuli from the environment.

Cells in the womb are human cells if they are generated by human beings. Most cells in the human body are human, excepting external microbes. What sets an embryo apart is that it is related to its parents but still exists as a unique individual.

What you do to yourself is your business and the business of those who care about you and can intervene. What you do to another human being is another matter entirely.

It is this sort of rhetoric that is costing the pro-choice position.

Hardly.

I've come to the conclusion there is really no point in arguing about this at all with people who have pro-life religious convictions, so my post was more like a joke amongst other people who are pro choice. AngelRho will throw away even the most elementary facts of biology to support his position, so coming up with a reasonable argument is pointless. With the decline of religion will come the eventual decline of the pro-life position.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 27 Jan 2012, 9:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Legally we are mainly just concerned about the right of the mother to choose abortion or not. It is not concerned whether the unborn qualifies as an actual individual person. There have been attempts to recognize the unborn as individuals that deserve protection just as we protect all other human life, but those attempts have failed for different reasons such as vague language, etc. Laws can change, so I think perhaps legal definitions are insufficient for determining reality. I rather think the opposite is true instead: Laws are determined in part by our understanding of reality. If abortion is to remain a legally accepted medical procedure, for the time being a more important question is what should its role be in practice?

The quibble over single-cell vs. multi-cell is really just about stripping human life of its humanity. It has historically been the rationale for all sorts of atrocities such as racially motivated slavery and genocide.

You, who disregarded someone’s post earlier in this thread, for the use of logical fallacy, seem quite fond of them yourself.

It is not up to the government to dictate how people should practice their religion, for the most part, this is true. However, this is occasionally not the case, where the practice of religion endangers or infringes upon the rights of others.

Allocating tax money does not infringe on a religious group's rights. That is just patently a false statement. Church and state are intended to be separate entities. I understand that this could present internal conflict to someone who claims membership with both organizations, but need I remind you that membership to either organization is more or less voluntary. I'm sorry you do not understand that, or if you do understand that, I am even sorrier you feel so compelled as to twist your words to try to make a case for it being true that the actions of the government should (or are) accountable to a religious doctrine.

Ok, we still have no evidence that the "zef" has even limited consciousness. (I would argue we have knowledge that is doesn't, actually)
A clump of cells may seem to act with purpose, so do single cell organisms such a bacteria. Bacteria should have roughly as much consciousness as a "zef". (What is a Zef, anyway? I read it as Zygote, hopefully that is what you meant)
Besides, saying there is no consciousness at implantation is not a claim, but a denial of a claim, placing the onus of proof on the proponent that says there is consciousness. That is where the onus of proof lies, try to obscure it all you wish.



The "claim" that it doesn't...that is funny. That is not a claim, but a rebuttal of the claim that personhood begins at contraception. The onus of proof is still very much on that, proof that personhood starts at conception.

You do not seem to understand what a claim is, and are confusing the rebuttal or refusal of a claim, as a claim itself. In your statements here, I have infered you seem to be of the belief whoever says it first doesn't have to proove it, but everyone else does. (Or more accurately, if AngelRho say it, AngelRho don't have to proove it, you guys do, so )



Sensationalistic and insulting words.