Dr Rick

You will soon enough.

See for yourself. Go to "Search" on the bar above, enter abortion and long winded fool, then click on ""Search Now"....

Kingreaper

Umm

no

I have memories of my THOUGHT PROCESSES at AGE 5

I wasn't ME exactly, but I was a sentient being

Feck it, I remember my thought processes better than I remembeer my actions

This may be wierd, but it's definitely true

long winded fool

I apologize for my absence. I was away from a computer for two weeks, but I hope we can pick up where we left off.

Good, then we are in agreement up to this point. Half of my argument is meant to prove this conclusion. The other half, the part where you and I seem to disagree, is the part which concludes that an ideal society is built upon a foundation of equal and inalienable human rights. (and that, therefore, to create laws which frustrate this is to create detrimental laws.) In other words, yes human rights are subjective to the opinions of those in power, (alterable) but I think that they should not be (unalterable,) wheras you seem to think that they should be.

Come on now. I already pointed out the UDHR. Human rights are certainly thought to be equal and inalienable in America, (even if legal abortion proves that this notion is faulty.) The fact is we have laws stating that human rights are equal and inalienable, and we also have laws stating that they aren't. Look up any state's Constitution or Bill of Rights. Here is an excerpt from the constitution of the state of Kentucky:



Ignoring the most obvious complaint and assuming that "men" refers to species and not race or gender, we have clear laws stating that modern day humans, (those in kentucky, kansas, illinois at the very least) feel that all "men" have certain equal and inalienable rights. Obviously United States laws do not apply around the world, so please to not accuse me of making this claim, but it is proof that there are many laws that do claim that human rights are equal and inalienable and where abortion is legal, even if there are places which do not make the former claim. In those places where laws denote that all humans must be treated with a certain degree of dignity and respect, regardless of criteria, legal abortion cannot exist. If it does, then the notion of equal and inalienable human rights goes out the window.

I do not claim that a society without "complete cooperation," or a society without equal human rights, cannot exist. I claim that such a society is less healthy, (read: less adaptable, less efficient, and less pleasant on the average,) than a society with "complete cooperation" or recognition of the equal basic rights of every human therein regardless of arbitrary criteria.

And fetuses do engage in social interaction. So long as they are interacting with at least one human, conciously or not, they are engaging in social interaction. Plus, their current state has nothing to do with their ability to socially interact, and the ability to socially interact is what determines whether or not something is a member of a society, not whether or not they are, at this very instant, engaging in social interaction. All healthy fetuses are capable of advanced social interaction because all healthy humans are capable of advanced social interaction, and a healthy fetus is a healthy human. Being a fetus, much like being asleep, does not take away the ability of a human to socially interact, it merely indicates that, at some future time, social interaction is likely to take place. Yes, I may die in my sleep, and if that happens, it would be impossible to prove that, before I died, I was capable of social interaction, but it is always best to be on the safe side and assume that a human who is not currently interacting socially because of some physical handicap is still capable of social interaction, especially if said handicap, such as sleep, is known to be temporary, right?

The empirical data to which you refer is selective. It ignores other contradicting data so that it may appear plausible. In order to do this, one must decide which humans are the important ones. Your data requires the assumption that (among other things) health problems in adult humans take precedence over the lives of developing humans. You ignore the empirical data that millions of human lives would be saved with illegal abortion because you have decided that those humans are worth less than the humans whose lives will be made more inconvenient. My argument does not make such subjective distinctions. I operate from an objective standpoint of the stability of human society in general. You operate from the assumption that only some humans should be factored into the argument.

This is the reason I have provided you with no "empirical data" and have stuck with analogies and philosophical distinctions. Not because it isn't there, but because I know where you are coming from and know that you do not see a human life as having social value until it acheives a certain standard that you have established. Don't you agree that if I tell you that millions of human lives would be saved by illegal abortion, I will be telling you nothing new? Should I be surprised that this empirical data does not sway you? I am not. You are pro-choice. Why would I provide you with empirical data that I already know you reject on the basis of ideology? Doesn't it make more sense that I attack your ideology instead?

It was a response to:

If inalienable rights is not reality, many societies which practice legal abortion seem to think that it is and should be. Therefore, any analogy which does not allow for the existence of certain inalienable legal rights is not accurately reflecting the general consensus of human societies on the notion of human rights.

You think they are spurious because I invoke the concept of inalienable rights, which you reject. But the fact is, you are in the minority. Just because you don't think human rights ought to be equal does not make them unequal. What makes human rights unequal is laws which contradict them: Legal slavery, legal genocide, etc. You are correct that human rights are unequal. You are wrong to assume that this is the intention of society. It is not. Most societies believe that they have fair and equal human rights. The question is not in equality and fairness, it is in the definition of human.

I contend that any "empirical data" in regards to the functioning of society which does not allow for the existence of equal and inalienable human rights is spurious. Such data can be used to prove anything. All you have to do is first determine which groups of humans you are trying to benefit and which can be sacrificed.

I never rejected their view. I simply explained the view that currently exists. Animals are resources, and humans are not. That is why animal rights are geared around what they can provide humans, rather than any natural law regarding the notion that cooperation with animals is beneficial. I make no moral judgment on this. If cooperation with animals and viewing them as equals means a utopian world where everyone is a vegetarian and animals help till the fields out of kindness and respect for their neighbors, then I'm all for it. If it means allowing a pack of wolves to eat my family and an army of locusts to wipe out my crops, then I am against it.

In past societies, black humans were resources and white humans were not. That is the basis on which black humans' rights were different than white humans'. I make no moral judgment on this either. But I do point out that societies which establish inequality between humans based on power and resource production are unhealthy societies. I do not know that societies which establish arbitrary inequality between humans and animals based on power and resource production are also unhealthy, but they might very well be. If they are, then animals ought to be granted equal rights to humans. If they aren't necessarily, then I don't see why animals ought to be granted human rights outside of subjective mammalian empathy.

What is your definition of "meaningful?" In a society where every human who is not anglo-saxon is sacrificed to a demon, are there any meaningful human rights? On the one hand, there could be. Anglo-saxon humans have the right not to be sacrificed. But on the other (more accurate) hand, what right do anglo saxon humans really have? If light-haired anglo-saxons decide that their demon now wants dark-haired anglo-saxons, what will stop them from sacrificing them? The same thing that will allow them to do so. The same thing on which all of their rights are based: Power. And what an unstable foundation for rights that is.

There are no meaningful human rights when power and instinct are what determine who has rights. There are meaningful human rights when wisdom and rationality are what determine who has rights. When we ignore our personal subjective feelings and look at objective reality and establish laws and rights from here, we really can have unalterable laws and inalienable rights. When society is viewed not from instinct (i.e. what makes me feel the best) but from reason, (i.e. what is the purpose of society, what strengthens it, and what is best for it in the long run,) we stop seeing our neighbors (or our children) as competitors and we start cooperating to ensure the survival of the society.

Do you really think I said that? Again I get the impression that you are interested more in disrupting my argument than in communication here.

There is a duality to all rights. Yes they apply to you, but they also apply to me. The right to liberty is inalienable. No one has the right to imprison you. The right to liberty is equal. No one can be denied it based on arbitrary criteria. This is the stance that too many people take. From here, they feel violated constantly whenever their parents tell them to go to their room, or the courts decide to imprison them. But they are forgetting the dual nature of rights:

The right to liberty is equal and inalienable. You do not have the right to imprison anyone, and can be prevented from doing so by almost any means, (save lethal.) Is this really a violation of your human rights? Ideally, the only people incarcerated are those who have violated someone else's human or civil rights. You cannot assume that, because people can be legally killed and imprisoned, that there are no meaninful rights. What you can assume, is that if innocent people can be legally killed and imprisoned, then there are no meaningful human rights.

"I'm with stupid" is fine.

I cannot understand your need for this. Why is it important for you to have evidence that I have considered empirical data about the survival, stability, decline, and collapse of actual human societies? If I have, will you simply take my word for it? Are you more convinced by people who blurt out statistics than by rational argumentation?

None of those consequences matter, because the humans I care about are more important than the humans you care about.

This is an aggravating response, is it not? But how is yours any different? When I point out the consequences (based on empirical data, mind you) of legal abortion, this is your response.

lol. Certainly not. But I am suggesting that because the United Nations says something a large number of people believe it to be wise. Obviously that does not make it wise, but I would say that the burden of proof is on the minority to prove that conventional wisdom is not actually wisdom. This is what I have done in my attack against the conventional wisdom of legal abortion. It conflicts with another conventional wisdom. One cannot simply declare that one of them is wrong. One must prove it.

There are two definitions of "unalterable" being used here. Yours is "physically incapable of being altered." Mine is "legally incapable of being altered." Your refers to power, mine refers to reason. You are right that no law is physically unalterable. A tyrant can easily revoke the right to life of a minority. This makes such a right physically alterable.

You are wrong if you believe that no law can be rationally unalterable. In fact, science is based on the notion that laws are rationally unalterable. When scientific laws change, it is not the law that is changing, but our understanding of that law. Laws must be permanent for science to work, because they are discovered, not created. Granted our understanding of rational laws may be lacking, but, as far as we can tell, the law of survival is unalterable, by my definition. Death will always be in violation of the law of survival. Therefore, this law upon which all social laws are based is unalterable and the rights which effect it are inalienable. Or ought to be, if a society is behaving rationally.

Cooperation not dependent upon equality is coercion.

But again, I think that there are two definitions of equality being used here.

You seem to have a tendency to take an absolute stance on key words in my argument and then throw them back at me with ridiculous assumptions.

Yes, not all humans are physically, mentally, emotionally, or morally equal. I would have hoped that you would assume that this was never in question. When I use the word equality in this argument, obviously I am referring to legal equality, such that rights and privileges apply based on fair, objective criteria, rather than arbitrary, subjective criteria. Assuming a healthy adult human, all rights are equal. When health declines, or when mental and emotional maturity is in question, some rights are revoked for the safety of others. When the right to life is threatened, the human threat loses his or her right to life for as long as he or she is a direct threat to the victim. This is all elementary stuff in regards to the progression of this argument. There are no contradictions with the applicable connotation of the word "equality" to be found here.

Yahzi

I knew a woman once who remembered making the realization that objects persisted when she wasn't looking at them.

I had a girlfriend once who had been raised in one of those Christian sects that teach that all children go to heaven if they die before they are five. She remembered standing on a street-corner shortly before her fifth birthday and contemplating running in front of a truck - to ensure that she would go to heaven.

Me, I can't remember more than 2 hours of before I was eleven.

/shrug

ecco

You surely must be aware of In Vitro Fertilization. Spare embryos are collected, frozen and stored for future use. You surely must know that many of these embryos are discarded at some point in the future. Am I correct in assuming that you would favor banning In Vitro Fertilization?

John A. Broussard

This is indeed an interesting statement.

If you were in a burning building and you had to choose to save only one of the following, which would it be?

A three-year old child.

or

A bucket of embryos.

long winded fool

I am against laws which allow alive human embryos to be destroyed coexisting with laws which ban alive human children from being destroyed. This is discrimination, and social discrimination against human life outside of a scenario where one human life is being threatened by another is always irrational, regardless of who the human is. All humans ought to be equal when it comes to the right to exist. To willingly make laws which state otherwise is to willingly make laws which are, on some level, detrimental to society. And the rational purpose of all laws is to benefit society.

If I could only save one, I would save the three-year old child. But this has nothing to do with law. It doesn't even necessarily have to make sense, since my mammalian instincts are what would be driving me, not detatched, philosophical introspection. If the president of the United States and a three-year old child were trapped in a burning building and I could only save one, I would probably save the three-year-old. This makes no sense, but it is how our instincts work. We tend to be more protective of young humans than adults and embryos. So much so, that even if the adult was of paramount importance to society, our instincts would still tell us to save the three-year-old. Surely no one thinks that it is a good idea to base law on instinct alone.

Instinct should never be the sole judge of where we place worth. Humans have evolved the ability to reason precisely because it is a better survival tool than instinct alone. When our instincts tell us something, "this feels right" or "this feels wrong" the internal dialogue should not be over. How something feels too often has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not it is a wise course of action. A three-year-old child feels much more valuable than an embryo, but why should this be the case in legislation? Just because that's the way it feels?

ecco

Long Winded Fool,

You very specifically did not answer the question I posed:

Please do answer - either Yes or No. (Please - just Yes of No)

long winded fool

Sorry, but the question was a loaded one. I was attempting to specifically state my position so you could draw the conclusions from there. In addition to your question, you also stated:

This is not a necessary aspect of In Vitro Fertilization. It is a practice that is often used to make In Virto Fertilization more efficient. I am against this practice. I am not against In Virto Fertilization, if we define In Virto Fertilization as fertilizing an egg cell with a sperm cell and then transferring the embryo into a uterus.

So to answer your question: No I am not in favor of banning In Virto Fertilization. But because of your reference to freezing and discarding healthy embryos, I must also add: Yes, I am in favor of banning the destruction of living embryos.

So you might say that I am in favor of reforming In Vitro Fertilization so that all humans can actually have the right to exist. Any practice that includes the legal destruction of innocent humans based on any criteria should be reformed so that no innocent humans can be legally destroyed, no matter how ugly, stupid, or inconvenient.

ecco

Yes it is a necessary aspect. Fertilized Eggs – embryos – are placed in storage for possible future use. More are always collected than are used. The unused are destroyed – or (a very few) adopted to become “snowflake babies�?.

If you come up with a way to harvest and freeze only the number of embryos that will actually be used you will probably win a Nobel Prize.

Your basic premise is that a fertilized egg is the equivalent of a human being. This is a religious viewpoint stemming from the concept that a soul exits from the moment of conception. Serious studies have found that at least 40% of fertilized eggs spontaneously abort before reaching term. Why does god create so many souls and then terminate their existence before allowing them to reach to point of birth.

You can win another Nobel Prize for finding a way to ensure that all naturally fertilized eggs reach term. Probably the only way to do this will be to ban intercourse without the use of a condom. When a couple wants to have a child, they will have eggs and sperm separately extracted. Scientists will examine the donated items to select only the best egg and sperm, allow the chosen sperm to mate with the chosen egg, incubate the embryo in a Petri Dish until it can be transferred into a larger incubator. At 9 months a fully formed “human child�? is delivered to the parents. Actually, since I thought of it, I guess I will get the Nobel Prize.