I wonder if people who are pro-life, claiming that a baby is a human-being somewhere before birth, probably when the heart starts beating, measure their own legal age counting from birth like the rest of us?
And I wonder if when they fill out a US Census report, they count in-womb "babies" as well? And do they deduct them on their tax records?
I mean, you can't have it both ways. It's either a person even before birth, or it isn't.
And in response to those "It's a child not a choice!" bumper stickers, I want to make up some that say "It's a fetus, not a fatality!"
Discuss.
Re:Good Fun
merlyn on 2003-11-02T01:25:59
And for war, and for the death penalty.Many of the people who are pro-life are also against government interference in private life of citizens...On the other hand, I'm not a hard-liner in either direction. I get to pick and choose my ethical dilemmas, waffling as necessary to appease the most proximate parties. {grin}
I wonder if people who are pro-life, claiming that a baby is a human-being somewhere before birth, probably when the heart starts beating, measure their own legal age counting from birth like the rest of us?
I've never thought of that before... Then again we celebrate and our age from our birthday not our date of conception as that is not as to calculate. And I really don't like to think about my parents having sex!
And I wonder if when they fill out a US Census report, they count in-womb "babies" as well? And do they deduct them on their tax records?
I would have if I could have but the law doesn't allow it!
Re:I'm pro-life but...
Mr. Muskrat on 2003-11-02T04:01:36
"we celebrate and our age from" should say "we celebrate and base our age on"
I find that most pro-choicers can't, or won't, answer this question. I asked this in on a newsgroup once and got everything ranging from the bizarre, to the hostile to the esoteric non-sequitur. A few more rational folks drew the line at brain activity.
I measure my age from birth because it's convenient to do so, tradition, and because calculating age from conception date is too difficult, mainly because most people aren't exactly sure when they conceived their child. Besides, would you really want to hear about it? "Son, you shoulda seen your mom the night of April 12th! Finally climaxed at 11:21pm or so. Woo-hoo!" - ugh.
I should probably mention at this point that I'm not religious. I'm agnostic actually. Just FYI.
My counter to your statement (in addition to the question above) is, do you really determine whether something is alive based on its physical location, i.e. inside versus outside the womb?
As for my own stance, I'm basically pro-life but not rabidly so.
At the right time
ioannis on 2003-11-02T04:23:43
> Simple question: when does life begin?This question is not relevant. What difference does it make if a baby is killed before or after birth? I suppose, the killing should be allowed when it "makes sense", as determined by the parents. A baby is killed, so what? At least that is how most animals think. Could it be we are more animals than the animals, when we ponder on silly questions like at what time are allowed to die? They should die at the right time! At least, this seems more beneficial than the rule of "when life begins".
Re:At the right time
rafael on 2003-11-02T11:29:17
Yes!Re:At the right time
djberg96 on 2003-11-02T17:11:45
> This question is not relevant.Typical non-sequitur from the rabidly pro-choice crowd.
>What difference does it make if a baby is killed before or after birth?
You gotta be fucking kidding me. So, all murder is just "post-natal abortion" then? I find your utter indifference to the value of human life (post natal or otherwise) downright scary.
Re:Make Better Choices
hfb on 2003-11-02T10:53:35
I've volunteered to help patients cross the freaky fundy lines of pro-lifers who like to dress up as death and show girls photos of ghastly things to scare them from following through with their decision. Yes, people can and people do manage to scare the hell out of the younger girls who aren't prepared to deal with some guy dressed as death holding a picture of a dead and bleeding full-term baby who screams in their face that they are a murderer. It's a pity that noone pickets the pharmaceutical research parks protesting that men can get a boner safely with viagra but women are still counting pills of steroidal hormones to prevent pregnancy or using IUDs and condoms.
As for choice, well, contraception is still primitive and unreliable, i.e. a woman with an ulcer or digestive upset one day may find out the hard way that the pill may not be as effective as thought.
And, imagine a 10 year-old black girl who was repeatedly raped by her father and her brothers and who became pregnant at that young age. Whether or not she regarded that fetus as a life is completely irrelevant, she was 10. I'll never forget staring at her when my mother pointed her out in the clinic as it seemed so inconceiveable, so horrible, a life completely ruined by guys looking for any hole to fuck they could find and destroying her life in the process. The hospital may have been catholic, but the staff helped her find a place to have her problem removed safely. It should be a more uncommon situation than it is. That hospital had quite a few cases just like this one every year.
Re:Make Better Choices
cwest on 2003-11-02T15:05:54
Agreed on all counts. There are just too many situations where abortion has to be an option to stand firm in a pro-life position. Or that's how I feel about it.
Re:Make Better Choices
hfb on 2003-11-02T21:34:30
Well, but take my point about the 'they must not think it's a life...' bit. There are also an awful lot of women who are married and have a few kids already who get a safe and legal abortion these days. Their reasons and their way of coping are all very different and, no doubt, many of them do think it's a life, but there are many other things they consider in the decision. A government which executes prisoners yet opposes abortion doesn't make a lot of sense in the whole 'sanctity of life' bit.
Re:Make Better Choices
cwest on 2003-11-03T14:30:31
I can accept your point here, especially when considering that everyone copes differently. I am very close to a woman who had a few children and then had one aborted. She's regretted it ever since, and had two more children. The choice wasn't a good one for her.
Along the lines of not having abortion legislated, this type of decision is too difficult, I think, for the black and white of law.
Re:Make Better Choices
pudge on 2003-11-03T19:43:51
Whether or not she regarded that fetus as a life is completely irrelevant, she was 10.
Does that make the life in the womb any less valuable? It boggles my mind that we think our circumstances dictate the value of someone else's life.
I am not saying abortion is never OK. But it should be treated as a life, because, well, it is. Is it biologically an individual, human life: that is, a unique living organism of species homo sapiens? Of course, no question there. The question is when it is "human", and we can't even agree on what that means. I think it means a soul connected to a body. Do I know when then that happens? Nope. That means the only logical course of action is to err on the side of not killing the life.
There are also an awful lot of women who are married and have a few kids already who get a safe and legal abortion these days. Their reasons and their way of coping are all very different and, no doubt, many of them do think it's a life, but there are many other things they consider in the decision.
Yes, there are, and rarely ever are they relevant enough to justify taking a human life. It is almost always done for the sake of convenience. It's callous and despicable.
A government which executes prisoners yet opposes abortion doesn't make a lot of sense in the whole 'sanctity of life' bit.
I don't favor capital punishment in general, but it's extraordinarily specious to compare destroying an innocent life to destroying a guilty one. But that's not much more of an unreasobable leap than saying "I already have kids so I might as well kill this one," I guess.
Re:Make Better Choices
petdance on 2003-11-03T20:05:35
That means the only logical course of action is to err on the side of not killing the life.You had me and then you lost me.
I agree with just about everything you've said, that the key to the whole question is "when does it become human, and thus subject to governmental protection." However, I'm not sure that the default of gov't should be to save life. I value freedom pretty highly, too.
Re:Make Better Choices
pudge on 2003-11-03T20:21:09
agree with just about everything you've said, that the key to the whole question is "when does it become human, and thus subject to governmental protection." However, I'm not sure that the default of gov't should be to save life. I value freedom pretty highly, too.
Including the freedom to live, of the life in question? In order to put the woman's freedom above the freedom of the life in the womb (we know it is a life; that's a given: the question is what the nature of that life is), we must either a. say it is not a life subject to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, or b. we don't know whether it is such a life, so it is OK to put the woman's freedom first.
I reject that latter notion out of hand. If we do not know if it is such a life as this, we cannot assume it is not. If we are out shooting target practice, and think we might have seen a man walking behind the targets, is it justifiable to continue firing, as we know very well we MIGHT be taking someone's life? Is our freedom that valuable? I hope not.
souls; capital punishment
mary.poppins on 2003-11-05T04:24:15
I think it means a soul connected to a body.
Neat. What does a soul look like? Is it detectable via some sort of apparatus you have handy?
Do non-human animals have souls? Are theirs different from human ones? What about gorillas, or bonobos? Did Neanderthals have souls?
I don't favor capital punishment in general, but it's extraordinarily specious to compare destroying an innocent life to destroying a guilty one.
For the record, plenty of executed people were innocent. An infallible guilty/innocent classifier is impossible. So the comparison is between destroying an innocent fetus and destroying a possibly innocent adult.
Re:souls; capital punishment
pudge on 2003-11-05T04:40:38
What does a soul look like? Is it detectable via some sort of apparatus you have handy?
If you wish to be sarcastic, and wish me to respond, choose a different discussion. If you wish to belittle my beliefs, you'd be better off to not act on it. If you have an actual point or question in there, consider restating it to make sense.
For the record, plenty of executed people were innocent.
Yes, of course.
So the comparison is between destroying an innocent fetus and destroying a possibly innocent adult.
If you are to restate what I said to clarify, it would properly be "between destroying an innocent life and a found guilty, but possibly actually innocent, life."
Re:souls; capital punishment
mary.poppins on 2003-11-05T10:13:14
If you wish to be sarcastic, and wish me to respond, choose a different discussion. If you wish to belittle my beliefs, you'd be better off to not act on it. If you have an actual point or question in there, consider restating it to make sense.
Point taken. I'm curious what your conception of a soul is, and how you came to it. It seems to me that the notion of a soul is actually directly connected to the "when does a fetus have person status" question.
Re:souls; capital punishment
pudge on 2003-11-05T22:57:49
I came to it after years of observation, study, and reflection. Simply put, this dual nature of man is inherent to the Christian worldview, though it is much more complex than that simple phrasing.
And yes, this notion of the soul is somewhat related to the question, depending on the individual asking or answering it. It seems to me that if you don't believe in a metaphysical self, that the self is purely biological, then the question is even easier: as soon as it is a distinct, living, being, then it is a person (which would be very early in the first trimester, perhaps when the circulatory and nervous systems are functioning).
However, some people believe the soul doesn't "attach" to the life in the womb until much later, so that being might be a homo sapiens, but not a human, which is something more than biology.
I don't know the answers, but believe that this life may very well be a person very early on -- and I think it is likely -- and I believe it is unconscionable to accept abortion while believing we may be destroying a person.
This is, indeed, the only real issue that I see. The rest is just window dressing. This is not an anti-abortion argument, because it would not outlaw abortion any more than it outlaws any medical destruction of life (and we know that it is often legal for to destroy human life in a medical setting). It is an argument that says this may or may not be a human life, a person, and unless we know for sure we most logically assume that it is, because the consequences of assuming it is not are too severe.
Re:souls; capital punishment
mary.poppins on 2003-11-06T00:16:42
I came to it after years of observation, study, and reflection.
Could you give a pointer to some way that one could do such observation? I'm sincerely curious about this. I try very hard to maintain a careful, rational approach to understanding reality. If there's something to the notion of a soul, I'd like to know what it is. I just haven't personally encountered any information that would lead me to think that spirituality or metaphysics are useful. So in the meantime I'm focusing on trying to fix the here-and-now reality that I can observe.
Also, while my earlier post appeared to bother you, the questions were sincere.
I believe it is unconscionable to accept abortion while believing we may be destroying a person.
Yes, that is the issue indeed. People seem to disagree on when a fertilized egg becomes a person. Fertilization? Implantation in the uterus? Brain activity? Looks like a person?
I think most people oppose third-trimester abortion, because it has crossed all of the above lines. It seems to me that the main reason people think that a fertilized egg is a person is that it has a "soul".Re:souls; capital punishment
pudge on 2003-11-06T01:32:38
Could you give a pointer to some way that one could do such observation?
I don't think I could. I'll think on it, and if I think of something, I'll let you know. I'm busy and I can't concentrate enough to give a reasonable answer. However, perhaps it suffices to say that empirical observation alone is insufficient, to my mind. It was not observation, but observation, study, and reflection, and it was in the study that the observations became interesting. I wouldn't start with observation, but with study.
Re:Cletus the Fetus
hfb on 2003-11-02T10:28:21
I always love it when guys talk about bearing children because if guys had to deal with the affliction for 9 months, not only would birth control be advanced and safe, it'd be in the water supply.
:) As it is, we still have 1960s class pills but guys get viagra. Dubya will get a second term next year and the first thing he'll do once he's sworn in is begin the assault on Roe v. Wade. The religious agenda will be in term two since he had to play it safe in term one. If he gets a supreme before now and then, it's a near certainty that women's rights in this area will go right back to the stone age.
Re:Cletus the Fetus
rafael on 2003-11-02T10:45:16
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children." -- why is peridural anesthesia still legal, by the way?Re:Cletus the Fetus
hfb on 2003-11-02T10:57:44
Probably because the only thing crazier than nutty dictator with nukes is a woman giving birth who is screaming for some relief in the 20th hour of labor. Everyone in the room wants to live so the anesthesia is given freely:) Re:Cletus the Fetus
rafael on 2003-11-02T11:24:20
Feminine wisdom:-) Re:Cletus the Fetus
pudge on 2003-11-03T19:42:43
What cracks me up is when women say that men couldn't handle childbirth, and then they drug themselves into a stupor or get a C-section to avoid the pain. My wife went natural... now THAT I can respect and fear. Re:Cletus the Fetus
petdance on 2003-11-03T20:11:52
To be fair, it's not like carryin' the kid around for 9 months is a walk in the park.Then again, neither is bein' married to someone carryin' a kid around for 9 months....
Re:Pro-life? I think not!
rafael on 2003-11-02T18:18:09
If you start calling pro-lifers anti-choice, expect to be called an anti-life : that's how doublespeak works. Rhetoric battles aren't won this way, and bad advocacy is worse than no advocacy at all. If you want to argue against pro-lifers, analyze their arguments and demonstrate fairly and confidently why they're built on wind. Don't get lost on sterile disputes about the exact moment of the pregnancy where a foetus becomes a baby.
The main (only?) argument of the rabid pro-lifers is that killing early foetuses is evil, and that there's no excuse for it. It's thus based on the belief that absolute good and absolute evil exist, and can be defined ; this belief being fundamentally of religious nature, pro-lifers are often (but not always) associated to the religious right. But there's no such thing as absolute good or absolute evil ; the reality is more complex, and complex problems can't be solved by simplistic solutions or by unbalanced affirmations : but by a careful analysis of the factors involved, leading to the choice of a solution which will cause the less harm for the lesser people. That's what ethics is about.
Now let's just ask what's best. Medicalized abortions, or clandestine ones ? Mandatory courses about sexuality and contraception in schools, or a flood of teenage pregnancies ? Psychological support and proposals of alternatives for women that want to abort, or their rejection in the infamous zone of criminality ? Facilities for giving birth anonymously, or The Scarlet Letter ? You said it. And that's why the current form of abortion, in our current civilization, is considered ethically acceptable and harmless.
Re:Pro-life? I think not!
djberg96 on 2003-11-02T19:28:08
> The main (only?) argument of the rabid pro-lifers is that killing early foetuses is evil, and that there's no excuse for it.You're picking up the religious right argument. Evil vs Good is certainly not the basis of my position. I think one must be able to define murder, or at the very least manslaughter, as it could be argued that abortion does not involve malice aforethought in the traditional sense. So perhaps abortion is "killing" but not "murder"? To me the difference is moot, however.
>Don't get lost on sterile disputes about the exact moment of the pregnancy where a foetus becomes a baby.
Is it a question you're afraid to answer? Is a 250 day old fetus no different to you than a 2 day old fetus?
I will agree with you, however, that the same conservatives that typically oppose abortions are also the same folks who have been resistant to sex education in the classrooms, general (or free) access to contraception for teenagers, etc, and that's another area where I break from traditional conservatism.
Re:Pro-life? I think not!
rafael on 2003-11-02T19:47:56
That's why I included words like "rabid" and "not always" in my rant above. Good advocacy, while using every rhetoric trick to prove its point, must not oversimplify the adversaries position. I got that from the old Jesuit fathers:) And yes, for me the very significative difference between a 2 day old and a 250 day old foetus is that the former can't survive without a womb. I'm surprised noone mentioned this yet.
That said, if you go back in time to the centuries where half of the children used to die before the age of five, you'll see that the value of human life is a very relative notion, that has significantly evolved with the recent medical progress.
Final point (and I'll shut up) : yes, I think that abortion is a last chance solution, and that's why I think that people who oppose abortion should also, to be consistent, approve teenage sex education etc.
Re:Pro-life? I think not!
hfb on 2003-11-02T21:51:34
I have often thought about why the women are rarely mentioned in the viability of the unborn among the pro-lifers and my conjecture is that most organised religions still view women as property, a maid, and something to give birth to male children to continue the bloodline. Why would you mention something you take for granted much like air and indoor plumbing?
It often reminds me of the old idea that male sperm contained the fetus, the 'seed', which was planted into the woman. Of course, it was also thought that a man would die after jerking off too many times as this was thought to be a vital fluid
:) Pity, that. Those who oppose abortion should also support health care, education for the children and pre-natal care for the mother for those who can't afford such things. Also, maybe address the problem of supporting the 'sanctity' of life' while voting to reinstate the death penalty in many US states.
Re:Pro-life? I think not!
rafael on 2003-11-02T22:54:01
I wouldn't say "the most organised religions", I'd say "the patriarcal religions", the ones where the unique or supreme god is typically an omnipotent Father, and which appear in patriarcal societies (like the ancient Hebrews for example). There are religions that treat women like human beings. Usually their supreme god is an omnipotent Mother:) But leading to less bellicose behaviours, they tend to disappear, of course. An interesting side-effect of patriarcal religions is that they always consider the women not only as inferior, but also as potentially evil (e.g. Eve or Pandora.) In turn, that triggers a general defiance towards sexuality, hate towards homosexuals, considering abstinence as a virtue, etc. Ever wondered how came to the early Hebrews the idea to mutilate their babies' penises ? That was surely not for hygiene, at that time.
Re:Pro-life? I think not!
pudge on 2003-11-03T19:56:41
Final point (and I'll shut up) : yes, I think that abortion is a last chance solution, and that's why I think that people who oppose abortion should also, to be consistent, approve teenage sex education etc. (rafael)
That would not be "consistent," as one does not logically follow from the other. For example, I am in favor of sex education, but against sex education in public schools, because I think the govenment has no business teaching kids about sex, any more than they have a business in teaching kids about religion.
Those who oppose abortion should also support health care, education for the children and pre-natal care for the mother for those who can't afford such things
Similarly, I am against federally funded health care because -- except in the case of federal government employees and similar -- it is blatantly unconstitutional. There is nothing in Article I, Section 8 that says anything similar to providing health care. It is neither an expressed or implied power of the federal government, and, according to Amendment X, is unconstitutional. I am, however, in favor of state-funded health care as a limited entitlement to especially needy people.Re:Pro-life? I think not!
pudge on 2003-11-03T19:50:55
Now let's just ask what's best. Medicalized abortions, or clandestine ones ?
What's best: that armed robbery should be legal, or illegal? That question makes as much sense as yours. If abortion is the unethical taking of an innocent human life, then it should be, under most circumstances, illegal. That's only logical.
And that's why the current form of abortion, in our current civilization, is considered ethically acceptable and harmless.
Not in my current civilization. In the US, most people think abortion is harmful and unethical. It only continues to be legal because they also think, as cwest expressed, that it is a personal matter, not for the government.
