Infinity Lover

I think it would've been more usefull to say "is abortion a right or not, and turn that into a poll.

If you can't make it go away, make it work. If you're unavoidably going to have women who undergo abortions, they should be able to have them preformed in a suitable environment by trained medical personel.

Jagged

Yes. I don't think abortion is a perfect solution to unwanted pregnancy, but it's better than an unwanted child. The goal should definately be family planning education and birth control availability. Such a campaign would probably be much more effective in reducing the number of abortions than anti-abortion protest per se. Possibly even more productive than pro-choice protest per se. Perhaps both sides would do well to remember this.

Garbles18

Well, I felt that it was self-evident, but if you really need positive evidence, fine. I base it on the fact that my earliest memory is when I was two years old. Most people I talk to can't even remember anything before they were four years old and they are surprised that I can. Now, that is just memory.

At that age, I was aware of my surroundings, but I had no idea that I was a living and breathing being. I ate, slept, filled my diaper, and played with my toys. I did not contemplate my own existence.

Now, based on the fact that my absolute earliest memory ever was at the age of two and the fact that most people I know don't even remember anything before age four, I don't think it is a leap of faith to believe that I was not aware of my existence in the womb.

I would say that the burden of proof is now on you to show even one fetus that knows it is alive. Good luck communicating with a fetus though. Brain waves won't do much when the brain isn't even developed enough to interpret those waves in a meaningful way.

As far as your reference to "God of the Gaps", I don't see the correlation. I thought that argument was when you don't know why something happens so you attribute it to a higher power, i.e. fill in the gap. How is your argument a classic "God of the Gaps" argument?

L. Noctivagans

Jagged:

Perhaps I should make this one little point clear, here.

I AM AN ATHEIST. How dare you presume I'm Christian just because I happen to have an interest in the sanctity of human life, even "unwanted" human life.

If every baby in history who was ever at risk of being abused or "improperly cared for" was aborted, how many famous, influential people would we be short of? How many non-famous but functional, happy-with-life people would we be short of? I'm sure there are some here on this very forum.

In a sense, yes. That's a rather harsh way to put it, but to be perfectly honest I'd rather you had the kid and then abandoned it in the wilderness to die instead of an abortion. At least then the kid has a teensy chance of being raised by wolves and learning to be happy with life. Even abused and neglected children, even children who end up in foster homes or as wards of the state, have a CHANCE at leading a meaningful life. And if you're responsible for them showing up at your doorstep, you should be responsible for at least giving them the chance to attain life, liberty, and the persuit of happieness.

I don't know what your beef against "life" is, but now that I'm on the proper drugs for disthymic depression, I'm pretty glad I didn't actually throw myself in front of a bus when I was in 9th grade. I'm also similarly glad that my "improperly caring" parents didn't just abort me to save me the trouble of having to exist in less-than-ideal circumstances.

The former has a chance to make a life for himself. Even if only 20% of kids in that situation do it, that's 20% more than if we just aborted them all. And what's the end result of the other 80%? They die anyway. So either 100% die, or 80% die and 20% lead fulfilling lives. You're in favor of the 100% die figure?

So let THEM make that choice. If they wish they'd never been born, let them call Jack Kevorkian and set a date. Nothing wrong with that. But THEY should be the ones making that choice. Nobody should make the choice of whether or not you want to live or die FOR you if that choice is IRREVOCABLE later.

If some NSA guy who's watched every moment of your life decides "I'll bet she wants to die", and kills you, would you be ok with that?

Day 269 - "choice". Day 272 - "infanticide"
The "choice" on Day 269 is pretty preemptive.

Do I look like a Catholic to you? Am I going to seriously have to explain this? Fine.

Sperm cells: Mine. Part of me. I produce them, they contain only my genetic material, and at no point is one going to spontaneously start dividing and pop out of my scrotum in 9 months as a kid.

Egg cells: Yours. Part of you. You produce them, they contain only your genetic material, and at no point is one going to spontaneously start dividing and pop out of your uterus in 9 months as a kid.

Fetus: Individual. Contains its own unique set of genetic material that is neither yours nor mine. Will pop out of your uterus in a few months as a child.

Clear now? Happy? Good, now I'm going to go masturbate and spray my genetic material all over the sheets with a clean concience.

Because having lots of functional people is generally a good thing for society. If every less-than-optimal-condition fetus was aborted, we probably wouldn't have enough genetic material for the tribe called humanity to continue surviving. Even today, with 6.x billion people on the planet.

However, if you don't like life, and you don't want to live, that's your choice. I'm sure you'd resent the aforementioned NSA guy making that choice for you, irrevocably. That's exactly what the people wandering into the Abortion-as-a-Contraceptive clinic are doing, though.

I 100% agree.

Garbles:
How nice. Unverifiable anecdotal evidence from someone who's obviously not any sort of authority in the field. I'm supposed to believe you over the MIT journal because....?

Maybe I just shouldn't go to the trouble of looking up hard sources for the stuff I put down. Since Annonymus Internet Poster Garbels18 can tell one cute story and completely refute a published scientific study.

Tell me, what were you doing at 4:45pm on December 19th, 1997? If you can't remember, does that mean you didn't have brain functions and therefore it would have been ok for someone to kill you then?

Jagged

LN

I humbly apologize for assuming that you were a Christian. First of all I doubt many abused children find a great deal of success in life. Second even if they did it’s not fair of us (imho) to say ‘well, you’re going to be abused, but it’s for the good of humanity so deal with it.’ Third, it is impossible to predict who will and will not become influential, especially prenatally. Does this mean we should have as many babies as possible to produce the largest number of influential people? [macauley culkin voice] I don’t think so. [/macauley culkin voice] Fourth, who says the key to being famous and influential lies in genes alone? What about environment?
Third trimester abortion? Myth. Fewer than .01% of all abortions in this country are third-trimester, and most if not all of those are only performed in the gravest of circumstances—serious birth defects, danger to the mother’s life, etc.
(my emphasis) Hang on a minute. Sperm and eggs also contain unique genetic material, the only difference is they have not combined with the other, whether in a uterus or a fallopian tube or a petri dish. I don’t think you’ve really answered my question about why you’re not concerned about the unique genetic material that is lost with each ejaculation. Also I notice you use the term “fetus” in lieu of “zygote” or even “embryo.” Please explain your view of their “status” as well.
Have fun! So your argument rests on keeping the gene pool healthy? People are most valuable for their genetic contributions? I'm just trying to understand you here... Also, I'm not advocating eugenics myself. (Are you?) Don’t you think there would be plenty of genetic material even if abortion were allowed? The world population is larger than it’s ever been. So large, in fact, that it may soon overwhelm our planet’s natural resources. Do you believe in family planning as a part of responsible environmental preservation?I'm sorry but it just isn't that simple. Once you're born you start making ties to life and other people that don't have anything to do with your own personal happiness. As to the abortion-as-contraceptive idea... *sigh* You are obviously not a woman. No woman wants to have an abortion.

*yawn* … (that was not directed at you) … I could write more but I’m tired so I’ll give you this to chew on.

Garbles18

Actually, you stated that the information from the MIT journal was that brain waves are detectable 40-43 days after birth. You still have not offered any evidence that fetuses have the brainpower necessary to contemplate their own existence. You don't have to believe me, but I am basing my assertion off of past experience. You are basing your assertion on speculation. Neither of us is capable of communicating directly with a fetus in order to ask them if they know they are alive. Of course, that is probably because they don't have the brainpower to communicate in any meaningful way.

I think I will stick with my experience instead of your speculation until you can show some proof that you aren't just speculating.

As far as my anecdotal evidence, I'm not claiming anything extraordinary here. You are. The burden of proof is much more on you than it is me.

Maybe if you look up hard sources you should take them at face value instead of inserting your own interpretations and claiming that your interpretations are documented. I never attempted to refute that brain waves are detectable in fetuses. I am arguing that having brain waves is not the same as knowing you are alive.

As stated above, I am not contesting that fetuses have brain functions so this point is ridiculous since I am also not contesting that I had brain functions on that date. Furthermore, I never stated whether or not I thought it was okay to kill a fetus. We are debating whether or not I, as a fetus, would care what you did to me. We are not debating whether or not abortion is okay. Please stay on topic.

Amen-Moses

I would vote "Other" except there isn't one so I'll just stay in my grey world and leave you Black&Whiters to argue amongst yourselves.

Amen-Moses

L. Noctivagans

That's a dangerous assumption to make. A WHOLE lot of children are abused in the country... and many of them do indeed overcome it to find success in life. It seems like you're saying that it's not possible to be successful in life if you were abused as a child.. am I misinterpreting?

Not forcing them to deal with it. If they decide they'd rather not be alive, they get to make that choice for themselves. I'm simply saying it's immoral to make that choice irrevokably for them without their consent.

My point exactly. My suggestion is to not kill any of them and let them develop as they may... your suggestion seems to be kill all of them and hope nobody important (or even potentially happy) was in there.

There are lots of autobiographies by successful people about how they overcame their environments to be successful. Enviroment isn't the omega-factor. It CAN be surpassed. The trick is someone has to have a chance at surpassing it. If they're dead, they can't surpass their environment.

But they still fall under the "choice" heading. They still exist, and could still be used as last-minute contraception. Unless there are legalities I'm not familiar with...?

IIRC, every bit of genetic information contained in my sex cells is also contained somewhere else (in other cells of mine). There's nothing 'unique' about a sex cell in and of itself. It only develops unique characteristics when it combines with another sex cell (and then it's only unique because it's a nearly-unreproduceble mix of two peoples' genetic information).

I wondered if that was going to get me in trouble or not...

Umm... hey, look at that bird! The bright red one, right there! Are you looking? I think it's a heron!

It's hard to come up with a defendable reason for life to be a Good Thing(tm) when one doesn't believe in a higher purpose to it. Genetic contribution to the species is just my poor attempt at it. I'm relatively new to both atheism and pro-life-ism as philosophies.

No, not really. If I was, I'd be trying to say abortion is a good thing for <insert "inferior" racial/social group here>.

Yes, but not if every fetus with a risk of being raised in less-than-perfect conditions was aborted.

Bah. The entire world population could fit in the state of Maine. It'd be kinda cramped, I imagine, but still...

On a more serious note, I figure we'll all wipe ourselves out long before we can do any permanent damage to the planet. We're doing our job as the latest Extinction Event pretty damn well. In the long term, the earth will recover like we were never here. In the short term, I think I'd like humanity to survive a bit longer.

Yes, but I don't consider contraceptive abortion to be a part of family planning. Planning means, you know, PLANNING, not saying "Oh, shit, get this thing out of me!"

Aren't you making my point for me? If you develop ties to life, those are reasons to keep living, yes? You would not want the psychopathic NSA man to kill you, because you have developed these ties to life... ie, you have had an impact on your surroundings, and are now entangled in the process of existing with lots of other people.

The statistics seem to indicate otherwise. Outside of the United States, abortion is the *most* common form of birth control. In the US, it's fourth (IIRC, my data might be dated) after condoms, the pill, and abstinence.

~~~
Garbles:
So what is that brain power doing? Teaching the kid to twiddle his thumbs? Quite simply, we don't know. YOU don't know either, so quit pretending you do unless you've written for a peer-reviewed journal somewhere.

And you're not?

The same thing could be said for a 2-month-old baby. Should it be the woman's choice to kill it, too?

And I think I will stick with my experience of dealing with leprechauns until you can show me proof for your speculation that they don't really exist.

Who are you? Why are you a good sample, and since when is "1" an acceptable sample size?

Oh, thought just occured to me... since your earliest memory is at 2 years, are you saying it would have been acceptable to kill you before then?

You're claiming that life begins at 2 years old. That's pretty extrodinary.

Ok, here's my "proof": my earliest memory was from inside my mother's womb. She was listening to mozart, and I started dancing.

That's just as good as your story, after all.

No, you said fetuses don't think or feel pain. I offered evidence that they do, indeed, think and thereby (since pain is controlled by the brain stem) might feel pain. You responded by moving the goalpost from 'think' to 'sentient'.

Funny, that's not what the topic of this THREAD is about. And you're telling ME to stay on topic? How about you quit shifting the topic around under my feet?

And because I missed it in my first reply (for which I apologise):
"God of the Gaps" is a term for a broad category of logical fallacies. The general gist of it works as follows:
(1) X happens
(2) Nobody knows why X happens
(3) Therefore, you can't prove Theory Y *doesn't* cause X.
(alternate) Therefore, X is caused by Theory Y.
Theory Y can be anything from "God" or "psychic powers" to "flouride in the drinking water". It only has to have a tenuous connection to event X, and usually will be difficult (if not impossible) to test.

Examples:
"Nobody knows what makes people homosexual. How do you know it's not genetic? You don't."

"We don't know what caused the big bang, because God did it."

Monkeybot

I said "Yes" based on the new criteria (should a woman have the right to choose).

I don't really buy the "it's a potential human being" argument. The key word there is... potential. It is not a human being yet. If I am on unemployment benefits, I am "potentially" employed - but if I got kicked off unemployment nobody would say I had been fired, because I was not actually employed.

Nor do I buy the "unique genetic material" argument. By this logic women should not be able to use certain contraceptives, since some allow fertilization but prevent the zygote from attaching to the uterine wall. In fact this is the reason the Catholic Church is against contraception -- to them, it IS an abortion. If this is actually one's position, go for it, but I think it is fairly ridiculous to be opposed to getting rid of a tiny little blob of cells. And if you are not opposed to birth control pills then the "unique genetic material" argument is clearly not airtight.

L. Noctivagans

I think you're downplaying the "potential", Monkeybot. You simply can't get around the fact that an abortion is actively taking an organism that would have become a human being and stopping it dead in its tracks. Whether it's a person NOW or not is irrelevant; it will be unless you kill it.

Of course, you could always use Jagged's argument, "Life ain't really all THAT great..."