Clarice

Biological science is progressing toward the ability to grow an entire human being from a skin cell. Are you going to mourn the loss of billions of lives each day when this occurs?

I can't believe you actually posted this. Because you heard it from some unidentified source, it must be true, right? If you have any knowledge of female anatomy, sexual response, and the procedure of abortion, I can't imagine why you would lend this any creedence whatsoever. Of course, if someone thinks of pro-choice women as uncaring trollops who need to be punished with pregnancy for their sexuality, I suppose he might accept it uncritically.

KitKit

here is the AHA's collective opinion (it is in their "statement on the family")...

"The customs, regulations, and laws under which we live must be scrutinized for their impact on the family. No law should force incompatible families to stay together. And no law or regulation should require women to bear unwanted children. Children have a right to be wanted and a right to be born into the bosom of the family, not into an unnatural, nonloving atmosphere."

i agree with this wholeheartedly. it would be ideal if we could force people to have their children AND love them AND take proper care of them. but unfortunately we can't. so what do we get when we force people to have their children, but can't force them to love & care for them? we get children who are raised without morals, values or a sense of responsibility to care for others. well i'm sure you can imagine where this will get us in society.

and this was SO eloquently phrased by Terri Mandell (i found the link to her article "Raising Humanist Children" on this forum)...

"Children trust us because they have no choice. It's what they have to do to stay alive. That's what makes the responsibility of parenthood so incredible, and that's why having only wanted children, and learning how to respect and love them is the answer to just about every social problem in our country."

so maybe it isn't the lack of religion that has gotten this country to the state it's in (like all the fundies suggest)...maybe it's the lack of respect that people show their children from the day they are born. and MAYBE that is in part because of the tremendous pressure we put on people to have unwanted children. even though abortion is legal there are SO many girls & women who are guilted [not a word? should be if it isn't] into having children they never wanted to begin with. and how do we typically treat someone we don't want around? think about it

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Can you READ?

I not ONCE said that your mother was a murderer. I stated she would be a KILLER. And then I pointed out the difference.

Reading comprehension!

She would be a killer (though not willing), but not a murderer, under the definition of human so offered.

long winded fool

A fascinating opinion, nonetheless, a human being is any member of the family Hominidae and genus homo. If you disagree with this then you disagree with the accepted scientific definition of human being present in any dictionary. The defining quality of being human is being a member of the species. That is all. Equal human rights is supposed to prevent any discrimination against any and all members of our species. Inventing criteria such as thought, emotion, level of development, age, skin color, etc. for a member of the family Hominidae and genus homo to be considered a human being violates the definition of human being and destroys equal human rights. If some humans can be discrimintated against, equal human rights must logically become meaningless.

Advanced AI's aren't humans. E.T. is not a human. Neither are protected by equal human rights. Personhood may be another story, but rights apply to all humans in addition to all currently known people. In fact, according to the law, inalienable rights only apply to all people because they apply to all humans and all people that we know of are humans. If we discover a person who is not human, we might change the law to include non-human people, however in all cases, fetuses ought logically to have the inalienable right to life the same as all other humans and all other people. Personhood doesn't grant rights. Humanity grants rights and fetuses fall under the definition of being humans. Personhood is nebulous, to say the least. Human being is clearly defined. It doesn't matter if slaves aren't people, they are human so they have rights. The same goes for fetuses, if one invokes logic.

And I don't understand how the dictionary definition of human being makes my mother a killer?

Dominus Paradoxum

Yguy, you seem to have overlooked my post, so here it is again, with the salient points highlighted:

"Are you also against contraception yguy? What, in your opinion, is the difference between preventing life and destroying life?Because in the end it does seem to come to the same thing. And now you probably want to say that a zygote would 'naturally' develope into a person, whereas a sperm would not.But I am not quite so sure that this distinction can be maintained. Sperm were preserved by natural selection because they have a certain function. They were selected because they usually lead to a successfull impregnation. They were not, as it were, designed to fail. It could thus be argued that knowingly preventing a conception is destroying a person every bit as much killing a zygote is. Many Catholics, for example, devouty believe this exact thing. What would be your answer to one of them? Why, may I ask, do you draw this arbitrary line at conception? Don't take it so much as a matter of course that it just seems obvious to you that conception is something 'special', for many others do not see this. Most Christians, I assume, believe that conception is the time of ensoulment. I don't believe in souls, nor do I see how a puff of ectoplasm is supposed to confer something special on an organism. I take it, then, that souls are not valued simply because they are non-physical, but rather because they are supposed to confer the ability to think and feel. So how about this: A fetus becomes a person once its brain starts functioning. Is this any more or less arbitrary than your selection of conception? And if so, why?"

yguy

Sorry, started more fires than I had time to pour gasoline on.

I consider it by far the lesser of the two evils.

I think it's baloney. You can't kill something that isn't alive. Sperm are alive, but they aren't human beings yet.

If a line drawn at conception is arbitrary, why is a line drawn elsewhere less so?

I don't know whether that's true or not. The point is, it COULD be true; and as far as I'm concerned the responsibility for proving otherwise rests entirely on the shoulders of abortion proponents, since it is they who advocate the right of women to kill their unborn children.

It is far more arbitrary, because we have no way of knowing whether even the beginnings of a brain is required for consciousness; and that is because we don't know exactly what consciousness is. Many people equate thought with consciousness, but they are not the same.

yguy

Since every human being from the birth of the first human to date has been the product of bisexual reproduction, I think we can safely say that such a heritage is intrinsic to humanity - so that would be a no.

I certainly don't know that what I heard is true, but I have reported what I heard accurately.

I heard it on a radio talk show where the caller who brought it up was a rabid anti-abortionist. The response of the guest, a rabid pro-abortionist, rather that deny outright that there were such women, tried to defend such women.

That's why.

yguy

Hey, groovy, but I'm still left with the question: so what?

long winded fool

Harm comes from inducing guilt in young girls? What harm could possibly come from making a girl feel guilty about having an abortion that would outweigh the harm done to the aborted human? By what logic is the girl more important than the fetus in a free country of equal rights? How can a child have the right to be raised in a loving environment if he or she doesn't first have the right to life? Isn't the right to life a prerequisite for all other rights? "You have the right to be born in a loving family. Unfortunately you don't have the right to not be killed before you are born. Sorry." Has the AHA ever heard of the law of non-contradiction?

But back to making people feel guilty about contemplating having an abortion: If feeling guilty about my sexual attraction to little boys makes me feel depressed and possibly even suicidal, should everyone work to respect me and my personal choices and make me feel proud of my tendency to slip into my nephew's room at night? Will this solve my problem? Agreed I'd need help before I commit suicide, but allowing me to indulge my wrong desire is not helping, though it may temporarily make me feel better. Allowing me to molest a child is not compassionate at all to me or my victim, though to the unexamined mind it certainly feels like the compassionate thing to do. (You really want to abuse a child that bad? Well, then go right ahead. I won't be a tyrant and force you to bear the pain of not molesting a child... OR You really don't want to have this baby? You are so young, I won't be a tyrant and force you to bear the pain of not killing your baby...) Working to change the desire while preventing me from indulging in it is the only compassionate thing to do in such a situation. Certain things are wrong. Do you agree that sexually abusing a child (or anyone for that matter) is wrong? Do you agree that it is right to make a human being feel guilty about engaging in such an act in the interest of his future victims, regardless of what it does psychologically to said human being? While constructive criticism is better than judgment, all too often guilt must be experienced by the person with the wrong desire.

Now, apply this analogy to killing a human being. Do you agree that it is wrong to kill a human being for motives other than self-defense or defense of another? Doesn't it follow that it is right to make young pregnant girls feel guilty about engaging in this activity, whatever it does psychologically to the girl? I agree that it is a horrible situation and that guilt makes her feel horrible about it, but logic clearly demands that the young girl ought to feel like she is doing something horrible, when she is in fact doing something that is considered horrible, (killing a person because they are an inconvenience,) regardless of whether or not the horrible thing is rationalized by looking at the practical, utilitarian advantages to the benefiting party who is part of the vocal majority and ignoring the ludicrously obvious disadvantage to the harmed party who is a non-vocal minority. The girl definitely needs help, and should be entitled to any compassionate thing that will ease her pain. The girl should NOT be allowed to kill her fetus. This shows a distinct lack of compassion for both the girl and the fetus.

I have made an assumption that it is wrong to intentionally kill a human being for reasons other than to preserve the right to life of another human being that is imminently being threatened by the life of the first human being. If you disagree, then I ask what criteria you use and what this logically means to the foundation of American freedom that states that all human beings are entitled to inalienable human rights, the primary of which is the right to life. Either human rights are equal and inalienable and abortion is wrong, or humans rights apply only to those whom the majority of humans choose and abortion is right. If pro-choice means that not all human beings are fundamentally entitled to the right to life, then some human beings do not have any rights. If those human beings who are voting members of society can indiscriminately grant and revoke all of the assumed inalienable rights from human beings* who are not members of society, then human rights cannot be equal or inalienable and those that are in power solely determine what is right behavior at any given time. In other words, he who has the gold makes the rules, (which is a clear euphemism for 'he who has the might makes the right.') If this is the case, then pro-choice can no longer be considered a liberal, democratic philosophy. It is a totalitarian, fascist philosophy.

*Proof that an aborted fetus is a human being.

KitKit

your whole argument is based on the guilt of the person committing the "crime" (crime in your opinion, obviously not in mine). that was not the point i was trying to make at all.

the case i was making was for the unborn child. it isn't fair to them to bring them into a miserable situation. what kind of monster do you create by bringing a child into a loveless environment? which is worse? i suppose that can never be proved. you just have to go on instinct on that one. do you feel it is worse to abort an unborn fetus or to bring a child into a miserable existence all the while creating a hateful, miserable person?

and as far as when a fetus becomes a human... well that will probably never be proved either. but my opinion is that if it's still inside my body then it is still a part of me & i can do whatever i want with it. i can hear the outrage already. scream at me all you want, but since you can't prove otherwise & may never be able to prove otherwise then it's a mute point. everyhing that everyone has said in this thread is based on someones opinion of the situtation, none of it is based on facts proven by the scientific method.

and for the record, i had an abortion when i was 18. i was in a miserable abusive relationship. i was young and selfish & irresponsible when i got pregnant. i had no education & no hope for a decent life for my self or a child. i weighed the options & decided it would be far worse to bring a child into that situation than to abort it before it was born (which by the way is when i believe life begins, at birth). i was irresponsible to begin with to not make sure i didn't get pregnant and i felt it was time to take responsibility & make an unselfish choice for once. it was the most selfless thing i could have ever done. i don't regret it for one second. i am very proud of myself for thinking the situtation through & making the compassionate decision i made.

and i'm sure you'll say but how is murder compassionate. well that will lead us right back to the previous parts of this thread. i don't consider it murder since i don't consider it a life until it's born. we can go round & round in this conversation till the end of time, but until you convince me that it is a life before it is born we are going to end up right back where we were.