pro and anti-abortion: pro/anti partial birth?

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Maybe you should pay attention to what actual pro-lifers actually say instead of just making stuff up.

There's a game that the boys at the elementary school I went to used to play. They would each prick their thumbs with a needle or thumbtack or whatever, and then press them together to become "blood brothers".

When they did this, did it become permissible for them to kill each other? After all, the physical bond is even closer than mother and fetus, since blood actually mixes in this case.

If a man is having sex with his wife, is it permissible for her to kill him while he is inside her?

I find it kinda funny pro lifers nit pick on biology here yet deny it for evolution. According to the idea life begins at conception, then allow me to explain how you are a murder
1. Washing your hands kills bacteria of the same level as a zygote
2. taking antiboitics is murder, see above
3. using disnfectant
4. using mouthwash
5. masturbating
6. cleaning your nails
7.cooking your food
8. taking a shower/bath

But bacteria/viruses do not have the potential to become human life. It's the HUMAN life part that is key with pro-life thinking.

/Devil's advocate, I'm actually pro-choice.

let me rephrase, if you ever masturbated OR had a wet dream, your a murder since you let portion human life die

Actually, with cloning technology any cell in your body could become a human - so scratching your nose is equivalent to thousands of abortions.

Sperm cells are human, but not human beings.

I am pro-life, but I don't hold that fertilized eggs should be treated as people. However, I used to hold that view, so I'll try to clear up your confusion.

According to that viewpoint, when the genes from the sperm and the egg join up, that is when the new human being is created, since before that, the new genetic pattern did not exist. The only single-celled organism people with this viewpoint care about is a fertilized human egg.

In your opinion.



Well, for me, the crux of the issue is not life, it is freedom. We've been over this. You're trying to shape the argument one way, I am trying to shape it another way. I shouldn't say that it is entirely irrelevant, as it is obviously relevant to you, but it is irrelevant to me.



Honestly, I'm not advocating it. My personal feelings are that abortion is a horrible thing and should be prevented in every way possible (short of making it illegal).



I may have made a mistake focusing so much on the umbilical cord. "Attached" is not the only thing, being inside the mother also makes it a part of the mother imo. Honestly I don't see why you can't concede this. I can see you saying that the baby is a "genetically distinct life-form residing in *and as a part* of the mother" without contradicting your viewpoint. Having it be a part of the mother does not necessarily take away what you would view as it's distinction as a unique life-form. I imagine if you can concede this, we're basically done, because we've reached the point where it's back to the crux of the issue, life vs. freedom.



Well, as you have mentioned previously, the medical community would concede that it is life. I would be inclined to agree, but as I am still viewing it as a part of the mother, I still believe that the mother has the right to decide the fate of that life. For my point of view, it doesn't really matter whether the fetus is a distinct life-form or not, what matters to me is the mother and her ability to control her own body (and any distinct life forms residing therein).



The point I was making was that if there is no mother, there is no one to be prevented from having an abortion, and in the realm of this discussion, it's a meaningless tangent.



I understand what you're getting at, but to me it is, again, a meaningless tangent. If it's attached by the umbilical cord, to me, it's a part of the mother. If it's inside the mother, to me, it's a part of the mother. Regardless of how you view what exactly is inside that womb, my concern is the mother and her rights. As such, regardless of how we classify the fetus, my concerns remain the same.



I think I've covered this well enough in this post.



Well, I absolutely use emotion in my day-to-day decisions, although I try and stay as reasonable as I can. However, I don't make policy, my decisions tend to only affect me. When your decisions would affect someone else, and especially when they would affect many other people, I think it is very important to remove emotion. When having a philosophical or theological debate, I also think we should strive to remove the emotional element.



If I got a girl pregnant and we were deciding whether to go ahead with an abortion, emotion would come into play, and I see nothing wrong with that. However, we're talking about whether woman should have the right to abortions, period, not whether an abortion is morally reprehensible or not. With a decision that affects that many people, I would seek to remove the emotion, and I think that makes the decision easier (though still very hard).



I'm not sure what the post would be exactly, especially considering where I've gone with this extensive post.



No, and I think this shows a general misunderstanding of the issue. You're trying to find holes in my argument as opposed to attempting to understand it. As long as, to my definition, the fetus is a part of the mother, in my view the rights of the mother trump those of the fetus. However, once that fetus is, to my definition, an individual, there is no person whose rights trump theirs.

Unless I've misunderstood your argument (which is quite probable, actually), it doesn't just have holes, it is one gigantic hole. So I'm poking at it, in the hopes that you'll either see the hole and abandon it, or see my misunderstanding and correct it.

My scenarios are supposed to be equivalent to your position and obviously false. Do they fail to be obviously false? Do they fail to be equivalent to your position?

The only way I can see drawing the line at birth is if you draw it there arbitrarily. But if you just happen to put it there arbitrarily, you can't really say anything to anyone who draws the line anywhere else, including conception or two years after birth.

*headdesk*

No, vibratetogether. Now you're just being deliberately stupid. A fetus is genetically distinct from the mother, and is different from the mother. To deny this transcends idiocy.


I'm not trying to shape the argument, I'm just pointing out that you have incredibly crappy reasoning.


So the tapeworms or other intestinal parasites that are quite likely inhabiting your guts are a part of you?


Because you are wrong, and you are saying incredibly stupid things.


*headdesk*

I won't even bother.


No, if it's life vs freedom, life wins. I am not free to kill you, you are not free to kill me. If a fetus is regarded as a living human, then the mother is not free to kill it. The end. To be pro-choice without being a monster, you have to argue somehow that the fetus is not a human.


Hm. You are making the issue unnecessarily convoluted.


Why would we design policy using different criteria for decision-making than we try to use in our daily lives? Doing so would seem likely to introduce a disconnect between policy and the people.

I see I misinterpreted you badly before and I see why my thought experiments are irrelevant to your argument. Your argument is much less general than I thought.

Do you have a more fundamental reason why the rights of the mother should always trump those of the foetus or is this something you take as given?


Denying genetic differences is silly, but there is a reason why we should both agree with vibratetogether that genetic differences should be irrelevant. Imagine the foetus were a clone of the mother. If we think a foetus should be given rights, should we take them away again if there is no genetic difference? Cloning is not technically possible now, but probably will be possible in the future.

Maybe. But conception happens inside the mother, cloning would happen inside a lab. So there could be an argument that the clone is distinct simply by not originating in the mother.

I think there are plenty of other reasons why it isn't "part of the mother", the genetic just happens to be one of them.

This scenario is kind of a stretch anyway. You'd need to find someone who's female, has enough money to pay for it, wants to clone themselves, and then later decides to abort. I imagine that most people would be less likely, emotionally, to abort a clone of themselves. If someone wanted to be pregnant with a clone, they could easily pick someone to clone that is completely unrelated. That would give even less genetic commonality than normal. Human cloning isn't without detractors either, so it might not even be legal.

my point is, defining "potential for life" is nonsense. Learn biology and you will discover that wet dreams and periods fall under that heading. Second, its not your f*****g womb! you say its murder, great, DON'T f*****g HAVE ONE! just because a book written by desert goat herders thousands of years ago says it, doesn't mean you can use it to justify forcing your beliefs onto others.
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The argument is that a fetus is not "potential for life" but rather actual life. You just keep arguing against straw men.


Suffice it to say that I know more biology than you do. Wet dreams and periods are quite different from a fetus.


The most idiotic pro-choice argument possible. "You say it's murder, great, don't bomb the daycare!"

I find it idiotic that a question of biology is argued using a book written by ancient desert goat herders and used by a group of people who seem to fail to grasp biology (Evolution) so excuse me if I am skeptical about your concept of "murder", for all I know, murder to you is someone sleeping.

What the hell, cognito? I haven't pointed to the Bible once to justify why pro-life beliefs could be correct, in fact I have explicitly argued that religion does not speak one way or the other on the issue of abortion. I accept evolution as self-evidently true. I have not used Scripture to justify any statements about biology, ever. You can keep beating the hell out of straw men, but it doesn't mean anything.

Anyways, as much as you tout your knowledge of biology, I highly doubt you really know much of anything about evolutionary biology, or genetics, or immunology, or really anything in the field.