LordSnooty

How do you know that 'full grown dolphins' think more than human infants?

Besides, I value human life above animal life. That said, I value all life, and I am a vegetarian because of this.

I'll answer your other questions tomorrow, when I'm wholly and entirely sober. If you had actually read my other posts, however, you would realise that I really have nothing to answer.

Paul

[edited to remove incriminating evidence! ]

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

never been there

So you find it a reasonable expectation that every woman takes chemical birth control, just in case? And that if decides the side effects are too risky for her, then she bears the onus to bear a child, even if raped?

You take Depo-Provera for a few months, and see how jolly YOU feel.

LordSnooty

I actually agree with this, to a certain degree. Whilst I am pro-choice (or, let's face it, pro-abortion), I do think women (and men) should take more care to prevent unnecessary and unwanted pregnancies. That said...

Accidents do happen - split condoms et al, and believe it or not, there are circumstances where every possible protection is used, and pregnancy still occurs.

Paul

LordSnooty

Ah, good point. It is a common belief that the 'morning after' pill is a definate way of avoiding pregnancy. This is not the case. It should ideally be taken BEFORE intercourse (preferably regularly) to ensure the proper results. That's according to my school sex-ed, anyway.

Paul

Elaborate

When two or more methods are combined, the chance that both will fail is negligable

Yes, there is mroe to it than just waiting, but IMHO unless it is medically necessary, there is no need for an abortion.

Why not? It is not that difficult to take a little pill once a week.

That's why we have birth control

Elaborate

Yes, i think it is a reasonable precaution. You can never be too careful. If you do not want to take easy precaution against pregnancy, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Elaborate

Yes, but when combined with the several methods that exist, the chances of everything going wrong at once is negligible.

LordSnooty

Depends. I know someone that can't take the pill because of other medication she's on. And that's permanent.

Paul

Doubting Didymus

Hello? I think the rapist might take some of the blame. Silly him for not using a condom. Naughty rapist.

Besides, this argument is almost completely pointless if there is nothing wrong with abortion. That makes it a perhiperal issue to the more important debate.

long winded fool

Doubting Didymus, you make some good points and you make some fairly ridiculous claims. I don't doubt most of your facts, but I believe you are ultimately splitting hairs about tertiary subjects. You are a good debater, but if you insist on focusing your attention on minute, irrelevant details inside arbitrary analogies, we will be here forever. Arguing with technical facts is fine but you MUST argue within logic, otherwise we will have no common authority and discussion will be futile. You can refute the accuracy my facts until you're blue in the face but you haven't refuted the logic behind them, nor have you refuted the anti-abortion argument. Despite my poor analogies, I assume that you understand what I mean since I have given many different examples of the same argument and you attack the facts and logic of only a few. Put any analogy in there you want and show me how it is safe to assume an undeveloped human is not human.

"There is no magic line. It is a gray 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."

If you don't know whether or not something is a human, why would you kill it? Is it acceptable to kill something that hasn't been proven to be non-human simply because it hasn't been proven to be human? If I'm out hunting and I hear a rustle in the brush, can I fire haphazardly into the bushes? Is the burden of proof on the police to show that the rustling is caused by a human before I have to stop firing? I have tried to make this the crux of my argument, though I admit I have indulged other interesting speculations about if humanity can actually have an identifiable beginning. To do so again, since you seem intent on steering the argument this way, I would say that, compared to the analogy of the bulldozer, I HAVE proven that there is a child in the school by your requirements of proof. I have told the driver that there is a human inside, and he told me that, unless I can prove it, he's going to level the school anyway. You've told me what proof you need, (someone to inform the driver) and when it is given you ignore it. In any case, you have shown that humanity hasn't been proven to exist before birth. I agree. You think it's okay to destroy life forms that haven't been proven to not be human. I think we should wait and make sure they are not human before we destroy them. You would fire into a rustling bush assuming it's a deer. I wouldn't. When we go back and look, chances are we would find a deer. However, there is also a slim chance we'd find something a lot more grisly, and you, my friend, would be SOL.

I find it hard to believe that an atheist can believe in "gray areas." Aren't gray areas just areas where humanly applied logic has failed to turn up an answer? I am trying to shed some light into this area and you are retreating into it with the all-encompassing claim that "It's a gray area" and that's all. Instead of assuming this as a basis for your argument, lets explore it and see if we can find some real answers. What is a human? Without an answer to this, we can't logically condemn slavery, genocide, or abortion.

"If humanity develops over time, then the young have intrinsically less humanity, and therefore less rights, than the old." -LWF

"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." -DD

So then before the qualities are fully developed, the child is something other than a human. You, my friend ought to take a look at your own logic before declaring others' as errant. The very claim above necessarily implies that the older are more human than the younger. You can't get around this without saying that a human can't exist until it is fully developed, then you'd have to draw the line of "full development" and this pointless argument would continue. But if you'd like to nitpick at logic, then I'll oblige.

"[The driver of the bulldozer] 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."

The parent must demonstrate, by informing the driver, that her claim is true, but the driver doesn't have the responsibility of not leveling the school just because someone claims that there are children in the school? How does this work exactly? While I DO know what you're getting at, (that the driver needs a good enough reason to assume that someone is in the building) I thought I'd still point out your logical errors in order to make myself look like I'm smarter than you and also to avoid having to deal with the actual issue behind the analogy. (no hard feelings, just try to hear what I mean instead of what I say and I'll do you the same courtesy, all right?) I don't like pouring over my posts for three hours making sure that every fact is verifiably accurate and that every logical deduction is worded properly. I try to be clear but I am only human, and I assume you're smart enough to understand the logic behind my mess of words. This is why I'm so "long winded." The more I say, hopefully the clearer my meaning, despite the many errors in my wording. But back to your point: The driver needs enough proof, which is simply the suspicion, that there would be a human life in danger if he levels the school in order to be responsible if he inadvertently destroys that life. While this is a logically formulated argument, I don't think it necessarily applies in this case. (And YES I'm aware that this was my analogy. It worked with what I meant until you picked the logic apart. Now it doesn't. But my actual meaning is the same and still holds.) Since destroying an analogy doesn't necessarily destroy the argument it represents, I'll reference another, hopefully even more accurate one. If the hunter shoots something he hasn't identified, even if he has absolutely no suspicion that it may be human, he is responsible for its death. And if it defies his lack of suspicion and happens to be human, he has become a murderer. The life form in the bush also resides in a gray area. It is neither human by definition, nor inhuman. There need be no direct evidence of humanity. This is a better analogy, since the purpose of the hunter is to actually kill the life form in question. Since abortion is terminating a life form, and since the life form resides in a "gray area" and thus hasn't been identified, abortion is the equivalent of criminal negligence.

My position is NOT the automatic default, but I AM saying that it OUGHT to be if our legal system is rational. Simply having failed to identify the species of the life you are taking, with even the remotest of possibilities that said life may be human, makes taking the life grossly irresponsible. If the life does indeed turn out to be human, then there will be millions of people suddenly guilty of involuntary manslaughter. It makes FAR more sense to simply prohibit the taking of the life until it can be identified as inhuman, or until "human rights" are redefined to only include certain humans. While the farmer has a right to hunt deer on his land, he DOES NOT have the right to kill something that he hasn't identified. In the same sense, women have the right to do what they please with their bodies, but they do NOT have the right to kill something they haven't identified. Therefore, by this logic all forms of abortion should be outlawed. (excepting cases of life-threatening complications which would fall under ‘self-defense,’ should the embryo be proven to be human.)

The only way out of this for a pro-abortionist is to give a rational definition of a human that excludes the embryo. No gray areas, and no "it just is because the majority agree that it is." If you can't do this, then you can't be pro-abortion and still be logical.

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: long winded fool ]

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: long winded fool ]</p>