LordSnooty

That article was written by right-wing moral perverts, so I honestly doubt the accuracy of it.

Paul

simian

An acorn is a tree embryo. If you destroy the acorn you are destroying a tree, by the logic you are using. By throwing an apple core in the trash instead of on the ground where the seeds "have the potential" to become trees, you may be guilty of deforestation (at least if you treat the seeds are the equivalent as trees).

Is a woman who does not take complete bed rest after sexual intercourse, and has a fertilized egg that does not implant killing a human being? Presumably any activity she did after intercourse has the potential to cause the egg to not implant.

Simian

Oxymoron

Yeah, the source is lame. However it is a broadly fair summary of Singer's position, albeit tainted with said right-wing xian rhetoric. (My wife just went on a weekend course in Cambridge about Singer's ethics and we've been discussing that recently).

Elaborate

Lord Snooty
I am not one of the extreme anti-abortionists who will choose the zygote over teh mother. If the mother's life is threatened, abortion would then be okay. But if there is not reason for the mother to abort besides not wanting a child, abortion would be wrong. If she does not want the child, she may simply give it up for adoption upon birth. No reasinable person would force her to raise a child she did not want, because that would cause great harm to the child. But it is nto necessary to kill it.

Tell me, why can't the mother wait nine months and give the child up for adoption?

long winded fool

Dolphins also dream, have emotions and have a nervous system. And it can even be said that full grown dolphins do more "thinking" than human infants do. Is more wrong to murder an infant than a dolphin? If so, why? Obviously the infant's status as a human is what makes the killing of it wrong. So then the reason murder is wrong is because it is the killing of a human. And we are back to the definition of a human.

Do you agree that if there is a chance for a person with an improperly functioning brain to ever attain a properly functioning brain, then it is murder to kill this person? If so, you believe that the potential for humanity as you describe it is as important as humanity itself. If you kill a person in their sleep, then how can you prove that the person would "feel any loss?" Would their life flash before their eyes? Ask yourself this question: If you had to choose between killing a 2-year-old child and an 80-year-old man, which would you choose? If they have the same value and if you kill the 80-year-old man, then the potential of the child is more important to you than the already spent life of the old man. So why isn't the potential for the zygote more important than the 40-year-old woman? And when speaking of abortion, there's no need to even go that far. If both can survive with only six months of inconvenience for the woman, isn't this ideal? Let both live by temporarily sacrificing the happiness of one.

You reasons for why a young human has less value than an older one are not logical. You didn't say that but you implied it when you failed to prove that a zygote is not human. If thoughts and feelings and dreams carry value in them, then higher animals have the same value as infants. The only reason you value infants more than dogs is because of their humanity. So what qualities make up "humanity?" In other words, logically define human. If the wrongness of murder lies in the elimination of a thinking, dreaming, feeling being, then killing a chimpanzee and killing a human baby ought to be the exact same crime. Since they aren't, murder is obviously a crime solely because of the humanity that is destroyed. When you try to redefine this humanity to exclude humans under a certain level of development, you begin to include things that aren't human, thereby serving to extend the crime of murder into the animal kingdom. THIS is why undeveloped humans should be considered equal to developed humans. This is valuing human life far more than picking and choosing who can be killed and who can't. In this society it is wrong to kill a chimpanzee, however it is murder, and therefore more wrong, to kill a human. If a zygote is a human, (prove it's not) then it is more wrong to kill a zygote than it is to kill a chimpanzee. And if you follow this train of thought to its logical conclusion, it is equally wrong to kill a zygote as it is to kill an adult. How we feel about it has no bearing on the rationality of this argument. One can feel strongly that Africans are inferior and should be enslaved, but this doesn't change the fact that this is logically incorrect.

An acorn cannot be paralleled to a human embryo. In order for a tree to develop, the acorn must be buried in soil and receive adequate amounts of nutrients and water. The initial seedling that begins to root in the soil is when the oak tree is conceived. The sapling is comparable to the human embryo. The acorn is comparable to the sperm cell. The moist soil is comparable to the unfertilized egg. Likewise apple seeds aren't apple trees, but apple sprouts are. This seems self-evident. Destroying apple seeds is obviously not equivalent to deforestation any more than the deaths of sperm cells is equivalent to mass murder. We are back to the "potential for the potential" argument. Where did you get this crazy notion anyway?

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Elaborate:
<strong>No reasinable person would force her to raise a child she did not want,</strong>

Would a reasonable person force a woman to undergo pregnancy and labor (both of which carry risks to health and life) to develop and sustain a child she did not want?

<strong>Tell me, why can't the mother wait nine months and give the child up for adoption?</strong>

I can't speak for any woman except myself, so I'll tell you why I couldn't "wait" nine months. I put the word in quotation marks because, in order to deliver a healthy child, I would have to do far more than simply "wait". I would have to radically change my lifestyle in order to cope with pregnancy. I am extremely underweight, therefore any child I produced would most likely be underweight too, and I doubt that I could survive natural childbirth. I'm not exactly keen on "waiting" nine months and then getting cut open. Also, because I have no intention of ever going through pregnancy, I would be suffering for all of those nine months - assuming I was ever in such a position, forced to carry a child against my will.

Pregnancy carries with it health risks such as anemia, eclampsia and calcium leaching. I am not prepared to undergo such risks. I would not appreciate being forced to undergo those risks by anyone who feels that they have or should have more control over my body than I do - or who feels that an embryo's rights supersede mine.

Edited to add : What I'm trying to say here is that pregnancy isn't one of those things which always occurs normally and without placing undue strain on anyone. It's a balancing act between the needs of the mother and the needs of the offspring; in my case (if it ever becomes my case) the needs of the mother are going to win out.

[ December 10, 2002: Message edited by: QueenofSwords ]</p>

simian

In order for a fertilized egg to develop, it must implant in the uterus "and receive adequate amounts of nutrients." You may be surprised to learn this, but many seeds do not need to be covered in soil to grow - the can sprout at the ground surface and send roots down.

A seed contains an embryo. It is the equivalent of a mamalian embryo. The equivalent of a sperm is the pollen. Once the pollen fertilizes the egg (? - biologists help me out here, I am forgetting the name of the egg equivalent in flowering plants), it is exactly parallel to a fertilized egg in humans. All the genetic information is there, the seed itself is, indeed, alive, and respiration can be measured.

If you see apple seeds (apple tree embryos) as not being apple trees, I fail to see why I should consider a human embryo to be the equivalent of a human being.

Simian

Doubting Didymus

Ouch.

Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. This has to be the very worst anti-abortion argument I have ever seen in my life. This is pure unadulterated semantics and nothing more. If you can claim that a sperm and egg do not have the potential to become human, they only have the potential to become a zygote, then I might just as easily say that a zygote in turn has no human potential, only the potential to become a blastocyst. A blastocyst has no human potential, it only has the potential to become a foetus. Your argument is apallingly absurd.

The egg does not have that potential without the uterus. Therefore by your own logic, it does not have the potential to become human. The exact same criteria applies: If a sperm and egg are not human because they require the other to manifest, then so a zygote and uterus are not human because they similarly require each other to become manifest.

Absolutely not. the sperm WILL fertilise the egg and become a zygote. No possible criteria of potential can apply to one and not the other. You are making this claim over and over, perhaps it is time to back it up? Demonstrate some criteria of potentiality that applies to a zygote, but not to an egg that is about to be fertilised.

Why? Again you make this claim. Why should I take this seriously if you do not demonstrate what magic property a zygote posesses that an almost fertilised egg does not?

Long winded fool:

I hope to show that the potential to become human is NOT enough for the argument against abortion to stand. Eating fruit is not forestry. I also maintain that a sperm and egg about to fuse have the same net potential as any zygote.

well...
"yes", "no" (I don't agree with this criteria), "yes" and "yes".

For a zygote: "no", "no", "no" and "no". See?

There is no magic line. It is a grey area. The argument of the pro-abortionist is that zygotes at least are firmly in the white, and a foetus progresses slowly into black, until it would not be acceptable to destroy it. This is an infinitly more realistic position from a biological perspective.

A glaring non - sequiteur. You overlook the possibility that all the qualities that can be considered human ones develop to fulfillment in the child. The idea that it continues past birth does not follow from the conditions of gestation.

He has no responsibility to pack up and go home just because someone claims that there are children in the school. Technically, the burden of proof IS on the frantic parent. The parent must demonstrate (simply by informing the driver) that their claim is true.

You don't get to weasel out of the burden of proof just because the issue is important. I may say at your every meal that the meat you are eating is human meat, and demand that you prove the negative of my claim. It is a provable claim, why don't you demonstrate to me that you are eating beef and not bob every night? Because the burden of proof is on me, not you. The same applies here.

I suppose, but only if you accept that a zygote is a human being. I don't. Again, the argument is about the potential, not the actual. My point is that the zygote is a potential human, BUT so is a sperm and an egg.

Before the zygote embeds in the uterus, there can be no human. Therefore there is no problem with the morning after pill. You are yet to demonstrate any criteria that makes a zygote special.

I don't understand. Why is your position the automatic default until the legal system changes? Is your argument that the current legal system supports this?

We keep going over this. Its because the arguemt is suceptible to reductio ad absurdum. If a zygotes potential is so important, then so it the potential of sperm and egg about to fuse.

I'm going to be gentle here, because you obviously don't know what you are talking about. I don't mean to mock you, but I will have to explain.

A tree reproduces in a urprisingly similar way to an animal. First, production of pollen (equivalent of sperm) and the female gamete (the equivalent of a female egg) occurs. Wind or insects carry the pollen to the flower or pinecone and the pollen fertilises the egg. THIS is the moment of conception. It happens in the same way as in human conception. The egg is now a zygote, posessing a full genome.

This:
Is plain wrong, as is this:
The zygote of the plant divides a few times, and other processes construct the seed around it. The seed is shed, and the divided zygote inside the seed is the embryo. It is directly analogous to the human embryo. The shooting of the sapling is the human equivalent of BIRTH.

All wrong. The acorn is an embryo, complete with structures that can only be compared to a human womb, nourishing and protecting the embryo. By now the embryo is developing specialised tissue and is the equivalent of a human foetus.

It seems you have dug yourself a deep hole. With so directly analogous a process, the destruction of any unsprouted seed MUST be as bad as the destruction of a tree. What distinction can you possibly place between the destruction of a tree embryo (I do not use this term lightly, it is the technical biological term for the structure inside the seed), and a human one? If abortion is murder because embryos are humans, then fruit picking is deforestation.

Simian:
Um... I think its 'egg'.

Actually both the human and tree 'egg' would be called 'female gamete'. You might be thinking archegonia, but that is part of the gametophyte plant thing. "gamete" is the best you will get, and it applies equally to tree and human.

Elaborate

QoS
But if you exercise reasonable caution, which includes birth control pills, condoms, and spermicides, there is not even an astronomical chance that you wil get pregnant. It's very difficult for a woman to become pregnant agaist her will, unless she does not take those simple precautions. Thus, if she does become, it is entirely her fault.

In aticipation of the question:
What about victims of rape?

Birth control pills would certainly protect against that. In this day and age, there is no reason for a woman to be pregnant when she doesn't want to.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Elaborate:
<strong>QoS
But if you exercise reasonable caution, which includes birth control pills, condoms, and spermicides, there is not even an astronomical chance that you wil get pregnant.</strong>

Really? There's no chance at all that a condom could break? There's no chance at all that the batch of spermicide used could be defective? They're always 100% reliable and effective? I'm glad to hear this.

<strong>Thus, if she does become, it is entirely her fault.</strong>

Is that the justification for anyone wanting to force me or any other woman to undergo pregnancy and labor, along with their related health/life risks? You have not addressed my point, which is that a woman, in order to produce a healthy child, sometimes needs to do a great deal more than "waiting".

<strong>Birth control pills would certainly protect against that.</strong>

I am not currently on birth control pills, because I am not currently involved in a relationship. Furthermore, let's assume I was kept by a rapist for a certain period of time, such as a week. At the end of that time, I find out I am pregnant. How would birth control pills "certainly prevent" the pregnancy? Unless you're suggesting that all ovulating women, including teenagers, take birth control pills?

<strong>In this day and age, there is no reason for a woman to be pregnant when she doesn't want to.</strong>

And that's why we have abortion.