Why do so many people think that abortion is acceptable?

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Strange, isn't it? It's almost as if someone wants all the babies to be killed instead of adopted because they make it pretty much impossible.

Infertile couples dream about conceiving, or adopting, but they can't conceive, and the requirements for adoption are so high very few meet them.

And then there are women who just flush out their baby because it came in the way of career.

After enough abortions, those women eventually become infertile. Then they change their minds, but it's too late.

Here is a video on abortion that everybody needs to watch:

No it's not. (I don't think I'm going to go as far as you would like.)

There are personal attacks in this thread. I understand that this is a topic that set off strong feelings, but keep to the topic and attack the opinion, not the person.
If the personal attacks continue this thread may be locked.

skilpadde, can't we block the offender rather than the thread? discussion is enlightening.

I don't think we will ever enlighten these people. They just want to bully women for deciding what happens to their bodies because it makes them feel better about themselves for a few minutes before dissolving back into self-loathing. How do you enlighten bullies who want to tell other people what to do with their bodies to have control over others, because it makes them feel powerful and important in ways they lack in their lives? How does one enlighten those who don't want to be enlightened, they just want to hang on to their perceived power over others?

Wonderful & thank you (again)! Assuming you aren't going to claim a single cell (fertilized egg) is a human being, we can just cut to the chase and you can reveal at what point in development you are arguing it becomes a human being.

Agreed, especially since said offender apparently doesn't get the hint from generalized warnings and appears to actively be trying to get this thread locked, just like the last one. Topics should not be barred from discussion because of one member abusing a heckler's veto, instead those members should be removed from the discussion, under threat of suspension if need be. Even in PPR, the sort of naked personal attacks and name calling I've seen in these two threads are uncalled for and should not be tolerated, but they shouldn't shut down whole threads because of the actions of one member either.

Hehe you weren't specific enough. I'll try to lay out my views intelligibly, this was fun writing, and I have refined my views further while writing it.

FYI:
When I say "natural course of things" I mean the progression of a human life without human intervention to end it.

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Let's put to one side natural deaths, miscarriages etc. To keep things simple, we must assume we are talking about conception and pregnancies that have no medical complications for now, that will lead eventually to the creation of someone like you and me at the other end. This will be the general case for a natural conception.

We start by working our way backwards. We start with an adult human being, let's say it is you.
- Do we both agree you are a human being right now? I assume we both say yes.

- Do we both agree you were a human being yesterday? Again I assume yes.

- What about when you were 10 years old? Here, I think is the real sticking point. A 10 year old is not a fully developed adult, yet I consider you a human being at 10 years old. If you do not, then this argument must stop here. The point is to accept that a growing human being is also, of course, a human being. An old human being is a human being despite creaky joints and wrinkled skin. A young human being is a human being despite being small.

- Go back now day by day and look for a point in time where you cannot be considered to be a developing or growing human being (just from that sentence you should know that such a point in what is _your development_ cannot possibly exist). If you are honest, logic will take you all the way back at least to fertilisation, that is the point where all possible human combinations from natural human conception become one (or two in the case of twins etc.). Prior to that point a different sperm might make it to the egg, creating a different human being, a different future, a different life. Drawing the line at conception seems a reasonable thing to do for now, though I am open to changing my mind in either direction.

What does this step by step backwards facing logic look like when you reverse the direction? Is it possible to generalise without exploding heads I wonder. I'll try. Because we do not know the future, we have to change what will be into what may be. "Something that may, in the natural course of things, become (but not necessarily become part of) an individual human being, must also be a human being, the same human being in fact."

Now let's consider unnatural conception, the fertilised egg created in a laboratory. Put to one side the morality of creating it, does this fertilised egg have a future as a human being in the natural course of things? No, not according to our previous definition. Further unnatural intervention is necessary to make that happen.

Now let's bring in miscarriage and "natural abortion". First a question to ponder. If a human being does die prematurely, was it ever really a human being? It seems obvious that yes it was. A child who dies in the first year was still human. Just because we know with hindsight that a fertilised egg did not have a future beyond 2 or 3 days, until implantation fails, until the wheels of fate turn, we must consider it a human, granted a very short lived one.

You and I both know that pregnancy is a crap shoot on the best of days. The thing is, until recently so was childhood. Even today not all 3 year olds make it to 4. We wouldn't apply the "a few more won't matter" rule to 3 year olds. If a human is a human in the first trimester, then we cannot apply it here either. Even if 1 in 4 fertilised eggs don't implant successfully, and those that do have a good chance of not making it further, interfering negatively with that process is ending a human life prematurely. This is where I have refined my views: in natural conception a fertilised egg is a human. In unnatural conception, IVF style, the slightly more developed bundle of cells becomes human as soon as the implantation attempt is made, successful or not.

If humans are humans right from the beginning, unnatural human intervention to end that life and prevent their future is in general a moral evil. Never say never, there are exceptions, but there will need to be extraordinary reasons.

I've said before that it's possible these lines of thought could be extended before fertilisation, into the sanctity of every sperm and egg but I cannot myself make the leap. It would be an issue of whether it was moral or not to create more human life wherever and whenever you can. My postings are only about protecting humans as soon as they are created, regardless of how they are created.

Besides I was careful with how I worded it. A sperm or an egg alone cannot be or become an individual human being, they must fuse with one another to do so, it's only after that point my statement becomes relevant.

And that didn't indicate to you that those "lines of reasoning" might do that because they are incorrect?

A sperm is meant to go in a woman's vagina to combine with an egg, that is what it is designed by nature to do. So you masturbating and not putting the sperm where it belongs is equivalently immoral, by your own reasoning, to an abortion, because of the "human interference" (ie. your interference jerking the sperm out of yourself rather than depositing it in a woman to make a child, where it naturally belongs and where a person would eventually develop) which would be equivalent to the interference of an abortion doctor removing the fertilised egg from the woman's womb. I am using your logic, so tell me why it's incorrect at the level of masturbating but somehow magically correct when applied to the sperm after it has entered an egg? You admit yourself it's a leap, yet you can't accept how patently false your reasoning is. It's mind-boggling, the mental gymnastics you must be doing to make this make sense to yourself.

i think micah is being unfairly targeted, but some folks do believe as wilburforce states. and this is funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0kJHQpvgB8

No it's not Wilburforce. Wordy as I was all I have done is given an argument that a human life begins at fertilisation in natural conception and made a possible exception to that for artificial fertilisation based on what will happen if humans do not interfere with its development. It's a leap to take that argument alone and say we must create as many humans as possible and therefore that wasting sperm and eggs with callous disregard is genocide.

You have some options if you actually wish to debate the point and I will listen and comment diligently:

1) Provide an alternative starting point for human life.
2) Accept that human life does start at fertilisation and argue that human life in itself is not worthy of protection alone, and other criteria need to met.
3) Basically accept my premise and argue about the circumstances in which a human life can be morally ended due to the circumstances of the mother.

i already posited viability as a starting point. before that it's a potential life, but not a life on its own merit. it's more of a parasite. possibly a wanted parasite, but a parasite, nonetheless.

A human life is a human life when it is self-supporting (ie. no longer relying on the mother's organs and system to stay alive)--so when a baby is viable outside the womb is when I call it a human life. Most doctors seem to agree with me.

It is exactly that, a parasite that is reliant on the mother's body to survive. Anything that is living off my body is within my power to decide whether it can continue to live off my body or not, because I don't have to share my organ function with anyone I don't want to. It's basically the right to self-autonomy, the right to decide who gets to use my organs and who doesn't. If you were a woman and had a womb, this would be obvious to you--the choice what happens inside it is the choice of who the womb belongs to. Viability is the standard that most sane people accept as the beginning of human life. It is so difficult to reason with people coming from a place of ownership over someone else's body, it's like trying to argue with someone that water is wet, when they keep insisting on how obviously dry water is to them. How can there be sane debate about the wetness/dryness of water? How can there be sane debate whether or not an adult human woman should have the choice of what happens inside her own body? It feels so futile, trying to argue a perfectly sane and blatantly obvious truth to those who refuse to see said blatantly obvious truth.

Life begins at conception.