long winded fool

J-D, after rereading your posts, I think I see where your problem with my attitude toward your position is. Instead of attempting to move the conversation along by assuming things for the sake of argument, I'll pause here so that my position is clear. I agree with your "balance sheet."

They look different to me too. My conclusion from this particular balance sheet is that, in terms of consequences to society, the cost of legal abortion is greater than the cost of illegal abortion. While I believe you constructed the sheet to prove the opposite conclusion, I will no longer assume this. Rather than provide you with a parallel argument that addresses where you are wrong, I'll simply use the very one you provided. According to the above quote, the consequences of legal abortion make illegal abortion the preferable law.

Dr Rick

The dispassionate reader may wonder why lwf chose to skip-over Article 1 in that quote? The answer, of course, is because it contradicts his claims:

UNDHR Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Is it obvious that when the UNDHR uses the word born that it is not referring to fetuses. Clearly, according to the UNDHR, all humans may have rights, but not all fetuses do.

If the goal is to "eliminate contradiction", the best place for lwf to start would be with his own claims. The Born Alive Infants Protection Act only contradicts what lwf has posted, not established law. It’s exclusion of fetuses is explicit, not implicit, and it is entirely consistent with the UNDHR’s exclusion of fetuses, too:

The Born Alive Infants Protection Act
Public Law 107-207
U.S. Code
Title 1, Chapter 1: Rules of Construction
Section 8.

''Person'', ''human being'', ''child'', and ''individual'' as including born-alive infant

(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words ''person'', ''human being'', ''child'', and ''individual'', shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive [emphasis added] at any stage of development.

(b) As used in this section, the term ''born alive'', with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being ''born alive'' as defined in this section.

Though lwf's posts don't often make sense, they do sometimes convey a wonderful if unintended irony.

Dr Rick

Pro-choicers are overwhelmingly in favor of providing women with the means to prevent fertilization. The only significant opposition to contraception or to making it readily available comes from within the ranks of pro-lifers.

Furthermore, ova can and do get fertilized irrespective of whether or not a host wants it. This isn't just a "simple notion"; it is a fact.

lwf's claims rest upon equivocating the term human and its various synonyms. As he himself has noted:

He's nailed his own fallacy. lwf's claim is based upon shifting definitions in two separate assertions,
P1: and P2:In these two seperate statements, the taxonomic definition meant by the word human in P1 is not the same as the definition of human being in P2, leading to lwf's false dichotomy:
As he himself so succinctly put it: lwf's claim is dependent upon shifting the definitions of the words in his argument. He is inserting a taxonomic definition from P1 into P2, though the wording in P2 is clearly not meant to be defined by taxonomy alone.

Despite having been corrected several times already, lwf doggedly persists in reposting his falsehood. The authors of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act must have had access to English dictionaries, too, when they wrote that the words ''person'', ''human being'', ''child'', and ''individual'', shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive... yet they clearly mean something that does not include fetuses when they use the words human being.

That's because, contrary to lwf's insistence, there are many definitions for the word human and its synonyms. From dictionary.com: hu·man A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens. A person. Of, relating to, or characteristic of humans. Having or showing those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from other animals: an act of human kindness. Subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans: a mistake that shows he's only human; human frailty. Having the form of a human. Made up of humans: formed a human bridge across the ice. Consisting of members of the family Hominidae...

If a woman is banned from destroying her fetus, then she is forced to bear it.

J-D

I'm most grateful to Dr Rick for providing in post #512 the text of part of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

There you go, long-winded fool. All you have to do is read the law to see what the law means. And it means that the word 'human', in the law, does not necessarily include 'fetus'.

But this suggests to me another question.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the legislators of your country--or some other country--decided to coin, for the first time in history, some entirely new word, which would be explicitly defined in every dictionary as including born humans but not unborn ones. And suppose they then went through every law on the books and inserted this newly coined word in place of the word 'human'. What would you say about that? Would you think that was a good change, or a bad change? Or would you say that it was evaluatively neutral, or that you needed further information to evaluate it, or that its evaluation would depend on the circumstances?

long winded fool

Of course not. What I would do in a burning building has nothing to do with what I think should be law. Why would you assume that it does?

The dictionary states that an organism of the genus homo is a human. Therefore, if an unimplanted embryo is an organism of the genus homo, then it is a human.

"From the time of implantation" refers to the organisms status as an embryo, not as a human being. So you are in error referring to an unimplanted human being as an embryo, when, according to the definition you provided, it is not. But what does this have to do with the conversation? We are talking about human rights, not embryo's rights. Whether or not it is an embryo is irrelevant.

Nonsense. If you were in a burning building and could save either a healthy three-year-old child or an eighty-year-old cancer patient, and you elect to save the three-year-old, and you also believe that it should be against the law to murder eighty-year-old cancer patients, then you are being as "inconsistent" as I am.

Please don't tell me you are now going to adopt Dr. Rick's ridiculous strawman. The reason I ignore him is because I've argued with him on this subject a great deal in the past and he seems to forget the course of those arguments. He lost this argument long ago and simply continues to repeat himself as if those other arguments never took place. As silly as it is for me to repeat it yet again, since I have not argued with you as much as I have Dr. Rick, I will say this one more time. Long winded fool believes that fetuses do not have legal rights. Do we understand the difference between this and the equally true statement: Long winded fool believes that fetuses ought to have legal rights? Okay? Not only does the word human in law not necessarily include fetuses, it specifically excludes them, as I actually stated in my last post if you are bothering to read them anymore. Now that we can agree that this strawman which purports to refute my argument actually supports it, (I reiterate, fetuses do not have human rights) can we please get back to the actual argument?

Science, and therefore the english dictionary, defines human one way, and law defines human another way. Specifically, law does not recognize all organisms of the genus homo as humans, where science does. Pro-choice people do not seem to have a problem with this, frightening as that is to the pro-life. Obviously, to them, there is nothing inconsistent about relegating humanity and therefore human rights only to organisms of the genus homo who have also passed through the birth canal. Pro-slavery people do not have a problem with this, frightening as that is to the pro-choice and the pro-life. Obviously to them there is nothing inconsistent about relegating humanity to organisms of the genus homo who are also descended from light-skinned angloids. Any human rights advocates ought to have a problem with this, simply because legal discrimination agains humans by other humans is competition, rather than cooperation, and is therefore detrimental to society. The inconsistency here is obviously on the pro-choice/anti-slavery, who have a problem with racial discrimination but not fetal discrimination. Making exceptions based on "race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status," is always unwise discrimination which weakens society rather than strengthening it. See my response below if you want to know why this is.

It would be a bad change, because interspecies predation is irrational and anti-social behavior, and I presume that a rational society is a good thing.

Reign_Cryogen

There's your answer: an unimplanted embryo is not an organism of the genus homo.

long winded fool

What genus is it?

ecco

No, not nonsense – inconsistency. You have stated that embryos and children are equally human, yet you would save one three year old rather than five embryos.



Not at all. Saving either one is not murdering the other. Are you implying that in any instance of a good Samaritan (eg a fireman) saving only one of two lives, he should be tried for the murder of the other? You also posted that abortion should be illegal except to save the life of the mother. For the sake of discussion I’ll grant that without the abortion both mother and fetus will die. Following your “logic�?, you would therefore charge the doctor with murder even though the abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother.

It is inconsistent only in the view of people like you who would consider something comprising four cells to be the equivalent of a human being. I, for one do not. I would save a three year old rather that a bucket of frozen embryos. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly stated that you do consider something comprising four cells to be the equivalent of a human being – yet you also would save a three year old rather than a bucket of frozen embryos. That is inconsistent!

Have you ever stated why you think that a four celled embryo is the equivalent of a human being? You haven't said that an unfertilized human egg or a human sperm are the equivlent of a human person. So, what is it, in your view, that suddenly occurs when the sperm impregnates the egg that transforms the egg into a human being?

John A. Broussard

I would have difficulties in making the choice between the adult and the child. I would have no difficulty choosing between the bucket of embryos and the child.

That's the difference between you and me.

Dr Rick

Uh-huh...so now lwf is claiming that science somehow dictates the contents of the dictionary...

The second part isn’t much better:

From dictionary.com: human:
A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens.
A person.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of humans.
Having or showing those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from other animals
Subject to or indicative of the weaknees, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans
Having the form of a human.
Made up of humans
Consisting of members of the family Hominidae...

The English dictionary has several different definitions for the word, human, not just one as lwf has repeatedly and erroneously insisted. And "science" has nothing to do with the majority of them.

lwf often stumbles around his contradictions and fallacies; in the process, he occasionally offers evidence that he can glimpse the faults in his reasoning. His latest posts seem to acknowledge the distinctly different meanings the word human has depending upon its contextual use, even as he mindlessly contradicts himself over and over again by repeatedly asserting that "there is only one dictionary definition" of the word human

He now seems to have admitted the obvious truth that the legal definition of the word human is not the same as the "scientific" (or more accurately, taxonomic) definition of the word, and yet he still hopes to equivocate the meaning of the word human from one context ["science"] into an entirely different context ["law"] to get his claim accepted as “logical.�? That can’t happen because his claim is premised upon an equivocation fallacy in which he argues that the same word used with two different meanings has only one meaning irrespective of its context. Its as nonsensical as inserting the definition of the word blues as it is used in the sentence, “I’ve got the blues�? into the proclamation, “I listen to jazz and blues.�?

It was easy to show that the law only contradicts what lwf has posted.

lwf first brought up the Act; it is not a strawman to refute his claim with the wording of the very law he completely mischaracterised.

However, this is a strawman:

That he can admit that fetuses do not have legal rights is not in dispute. This isn’t even the first time he has tried to argue a claim other than the one he’s insisting he’s “proven�? so many times before:

There is nothing wrong with that statement, but it is not the equivocation fallacy lwf has been repeating over and over, either.

This is his fallacious claim:

In these two separate assertions, the taxonomic context of human in P1 is not identical to the legal context used in P2; the attempt to assert the taxonomic definition of human in P1 into the legal definition of human in P2 is equivocation.

lwf has asserted that:

...only to contradict himself one webpage later with:

So according to lwf, human can have only one meaning even though it has more than one meaning. Got it?

Oh, I haven't forgotten those fabulous past threads; let’s have another look at the responses to his claims there:

So this is lwf's “victory�??


The accolades for lwf just poured in:

Yes, his claims are winners:

You know, it’s entirely possible that referencing his past performances may not be the best strategy for lwf; well, it’s just a thought, anyways:

And yet, even after all of that, lwf still just keeps repeating the same mistakes, over and over:

It may be a human by taxonomy, but it is not a human in the context of human rights.