Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by m00ner
The act of Aborting, or the process of Abortion, is the act or process of KILLING. If a couple is irresponsible enough not to protect themselves, despite money, then they deserve having a child to show them what life is really about.

Killing wrongful? What did you eat? Most everything we eat was once alive.

Irresponsible in not protecting themselves? Ever hear of contraceptive failure? Nothing short of removal of the generative organs is sufficient to ensure no failures.

You also seem to want to punish them for irresponsibility. Shall we punish drivers for irresponsibilty by refusing to provide medical care for those hurt in accidents? Where do you draw the line? How about my in-laws? We were sitting at a red light. Daylight, dry asphalt road--there was nothing in the environment to cause the problem. A fool used their brakes 4' from impact (note: *NOT* drunk!). Or was their crime talking? (Most of their injuries were because the had their heads turned talking. I was driving but looking forward and got nothing but a headache--but my mother-in-law was actually knocked unconcious.)

Abortion is murder, that's the bottom line. The aborted child could be the next Shakespeare, or Einstein, but it's not even getting a chance at life. The least that a couple could do would be to put a child up for adoption, at LEAST GIVING IT A CHANCE.

Far more likely it's the next Hitler.

Furthermore, if the potential is an issue then contraception should be banned. As should not having sex at the time of ovulation. Either of these activities destroys a potential life.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by m00ner
I propose that the government start a pro-adoption campaign or something of that genre to start letting people know that adoption is good, and you're being a big help by doing that.

Big problem here.

In the old days there were lots of unadoptable babies because the demand simply didn't meet the supply. Legal abortion has flipped the situation, the supply doesn't meet the demand. However, making abortion illegal again would flip the situation again--babies sitting around unadopted.

Governmental policy has very little effect on the long term reproductive rate.

Loren Pechtel

If the person reasonably did not believe they were committing murder then I don't see how the charge could be anything more than involuntary manslaughter.

Totalitarianist

To use a wider comparison, you could have included ant-killing or the killing of cells. Your comparison includes only highly disagreeable things; you thus inadvertently compare abortion to war, legel execution, etc.

Jane Bovary

How pathetic is it that abortion needs to be used as a bargaining chip by a gender that has for some absurd reason been granted lesser rights?

Blixy
How is abortion used as a bargaining chip...?

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by long winded fool
How about: The act of destroying a human being who is not directly threatening the life of another human being violates said human being's right to life, if all human beings whose existence is not directly threatening the lives of others have the right to life without discrimination. I'm not saying that it is illegal, only that it is a violation of inalienable rights.

Not bad, but I still believe the crucial test is the one that takes into consideration the rights of the prospective mother, which you haven't. There's something flawed about a woman forfeiting a huge bundle of rights simply because she got pregnant for whatever reasons.

Pregnancies are life threatening and women's health includes psychological health, so what is meant by "directly"?

James Brown sang It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World but it ain't.

hezekiah jones

Originally posted by yguy
Baloney, since you just said "person" has a legal definition. That makes it a matter of law, not debate.

Soppressata, since the debate concerns, inter alia, whether fetuses are persons. Although corporations are persons, fetuses are not, currently. "Absurd!" you say? Don't look at me. I'm not fucking Lord Blackwell.

Originally posted by yguy
Therefore, by legally defining any human being as a non-person, you may legally take away that human being's protection under the law.

Fetuses. And one more time the fetus has rights protected by the state, but they are balanced against the rights of the mother in relation to its increasing viability. That is a fact.

Originally posted by yguy
We have decided that unviable fetuses don't merit protection under the law ...

Right. Very little, if any.

Originally posted by yguy
... making them non-persons from a legal perspective.

Pretty much.

Originally posted by yguy
Now kindly explain to me what prevents us from deciding that infant children are non-persons.

At the moment? Legislation.

Originally posted by yguy
Fine. The law has allowed the killing of "unviable fetuses", effectively defining them as non-human beings.

You said that already.

Originally posted by yguy
I wonder if black slaves would have found the moral argument for abolition "tedious" had they known about it.

Black slaves weren't gestating fetuses and yes I find your particular moral argument tedious (if you are in fact making one) because you appear to refuse to take into consideration the rights of the pregnant mother.

Originally posted by yguy
Why is it any of your damn business if your neighbor kills her infant son? Do you have to nurse him and change his diapers?

Did I say infant son? No, of course I didn't. yguy made that up. Surprise, surprise.

It's none of my damn business if she decides to terminate her pregnancy because she has subjective reasons and experiences for doing so to which I am not privy. And to which I have no right to be privy. I'm not entirely sure you do either.

Originally posted by yguy
A purely semantic illusion, as I demonstrated above.

Not really. Non-humans and non-persons are not the same thing, at least under abortion jurisprudence, which is in some ways separate and distinct from all the other jurisprudence. Corporations are non-humans but they are not non-persons. Fetuses are non-persons but they are not non-humans.

Originally posted by yguy
Now that that is out of the way, kindly explain to me why we can't draw the line one year after birth rather than three months after conception.

It's conceivable (no pun intended) we could. But there might be some public policy issues in the way.

Originally posted by yguy
Lest we get bogged down in particulars, why draw the line at "viability"? Why not draw it at birth, or after?

Because late term pregnancies are clearly viable, and, given the state of medical technology, many more earlier term pregnancies are viable also (another difficulty with the Roe framework, since it's 30 years old). Although some days even I'm not too damn viable myself.

Originally posted by yguy
You are in favor of a woman's right to kill her unborn child, are you not?

To put it bluntly, yes, I am.

Originally posted by yguy
Is there really any difference between advocating killing them and advocating the right of others to kill them? Not just no - Hell no.

Yes, there is. I am not "advocating killing them." I find the whole deal to be an unfortunate situation, but I believe safe, private abortion care should be available to women who need it. I believe women have a right to negotiate their own reproductive health and freedom and their own choices in life. That includes the right to terminate unwanted and unplanned pregnancies under the safety, privacy, and care of competent medical and psychological professionals. I find the idea of government coercing women into carrying such pregnancies to term appalling, and it reeks of self-righteous religious moralizing by people who should just mind their own goddamn business and get on with their own goddamn lives. You asked.

Originally posted by yguy
Gimme time.

Don't count on it.

yguy

Thank you, that's the point. The same mechanism used to legalize abortion can be used to legalize infanticide.

The right of a mother to kill her unborn child except when it threatens her own life is a legal fabrication - nothing more.

Of course I made it up. You gonna answer the question?

QED

You think maybe there were a few public policy issues in the way of legalization of abortion?

So we draw the line at viability because some pregnancies are more viable than others? How in hell does that constitute an answer to my question?

Hey - put the right people in power, and lots of people may not be viable.

But you are not in favor of her right to kill her newborn because...?

Me too - especially which idiots they sleep with, and when.

long winded fool

But there are no such things as women's rights. There are human rights. Under what circumstances is taking the life of a human being justifiable? If the human causes health problems to another without their consent, can you take his or her life? (Smokers beware!) If the human is causing financial problems, psychological problems, even extreme pain, are you justified to take his or her life? What if this all happens together? We might all want to at this point, but can we? If there is still a probability of both humans surviving the ordeal, can you take the life of one for the sake of another's convenience? Isn't it true that only if the life of the human will take away another's right to life can said person be justifiably killed?

Dominus Paradoxum

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 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 suppose 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?