Doubting Didymus

Do you know any couples that are 'trying' for a baby? If so, you may want to inform them that nearly every month that they do not achieve pregnancy, a terrible loss of human life has occurred. If they are well informed, they probably know that fertilised eggs often fail to embed. Do they weep into their pillows? No, dissapointment is the normal emotion. A saddening (for them) failure to create has occured, not a death.

You want to draw a line in the sand. It would be nice, but it doesn't work that way. I would say you slowly become human (that is, a thinking human), over a long period of gestation. I would be particularly focusing on the development of the brain. There is no hard line to be drawn. I can personally say that I would be comfortable with abortions at, say, 2 months, but less comfortable with one at 7 months. As it happens, that is how most abortion doctors work anyhow.

Which country?

Look, you are trying to put a box around one of the greyest areas in the modern world. Taxonomic names are almost completely without meaning. They exist only for their useful applications. Taxonomists could rename the species into a variety of sub species if they felt like it. You are playing with semantics, but the fact remains that a single cell is simply a mindless collection of proteins, whether its DNA is for a human or a pig. The DNA is no different to that in your cheek cells, the cell membranes and organelles the same. The only thing setting a fertilised egg aside from a cheek cell is this elusive 'destiny' thing. As I have said, I do not understand how aborting a fertilised cell is any more or less of an interruption of potential than is a contraceptive. Both, if left out, would result in a new child.

long winded fool

Do you realize that simply claiming a zygote is not human is not an argument? You must give a reason why I should not assume that a human embryo is a human before I can take the risk and assume that I am not killing an innocent person for the sake of convienience when I perform an abortion. You call my logic twisted but you do not tell me why. I can just as easily "point out" that people with dark skin color are not humans in the same sense as people with light skin color. You can't simply "choose" to believe that someone isn't human and use that as an excuse to eliminate their rights. How many cells does a homo sapien need before it is classified as human? Why? And if the number of cells is a criteria for humanity, then logically poeple with more cells ought to have more rights than people with fewer.

I think semantics is the crux of this issue. If I am misapplying the term "human" then I need a logical explanation as to why. If I am not, then millions of women are legaly paying to have human beings murdered. I think this is a serious matter that can't be brushed aside with the accusation of "wordplay." As I stated before, if you aren't sure what you are killing, then you ought not to kill it. This means that this is an argument based solely on semantics. This is not an argument about the rights of women, this is an argument about the rights of all people in general, which I think you'll agree is a more important issue. There is no religious agenda to consider. This is not a grey area at all, I think it is quite clear. What is a human? The potential to become a human being doesn't make something human, but you haven't proven that an embryo has the potential to become human any more than YOU have the potential to become human. Something that is already human doesn't by definition have the potential to become what it already is. Therefore killing cells is not murder, but killing humans is. If the tiny cluster of cells called a zygote is also a human, then destroying it is murder, no matter how different it may look and no matter how much inconvenience it causes its host. And the burden of proof is obviously on the person who wants to kill it, not the person who wants to leave it alone.

The brain dead scenario doesn't work because if there is even the slightest chance that the patient could recover, then it is murder to harvest his or her organs. Truly brain dead humans are as good as physically dead; they're simply kept alive with machinery. If there is even the slightest chance that an embryo could develop consciousness, then it ought not to be destroyed if the embryo is a human.

"Do you have any knowledge of what it was like when abortion was illegal in this country or in others? If you did, you could not even consider recriminalizing abortion.

Are you willing to execute women who have abortions for murder? 14 year olds? Mothers who already have as many children as they can handle? How is that pro-life?"

There is no doubt that outlawing all forms of abortion as murder will result in the deaths of many women. However, mathematically it would save more men and women than it would cost, assuming embryos are human lives that will one day be men and women.

Call me insensitive of you will, but I think if a 14 year old girl had an abortion in a society where abortion was considered murder, her punishment ought to be equal to what would happen to a 14 year old girl who killed her already born baby in a society where infanticide is outlawed as murder. What is the difference?

...answer this and we're back to the issue of the definitions of human life and murder.

Toto

This sentiment chills me. You are willing to allow fully grown women to die in childbirth or put them to death for murder (I'm not sure which) because you think it will force some unwilling women to bear children to term, thus resulting in a greater population (although one that is unhealthy and unhappy.)

Do you propose to establish a fascist dictatorship to enforce your views on the rest of the population, or how do you propose to do this? You do know that when abortion was illegal in this country women still had abortions, just unsafe ones? Do you know the history of Romania under the bizarre dictator Ceaucescu, when there were pregnancy police who checked on women's menstrual cycles and travel out of the country to be sure no women had abortions? (And the unwanted babies were dumped in "orphanages" and grew up to be the sociopathic police who kept that regime in power.) Is that the sort of country you want to live in?

You're insensitive, no doubt. Are you going to force rape victims to bear the rapist's child? That's the logical extension of your argument.

The difference you're looking for: an embryo does not have a brain. The neurons are not developed enough for the embyro to feel pain, much less have anything resembling consciousness or a personality.

The 14 year old who has already given birth has the option of dropping the baby off at a hospital or adoption agency, with no further committment on her part. The 3-month-pregnant 14 year old does not have that option of walking away.

MarcoPolo

Very interesting logic here. Let me see if I can understand this:

1. Fertilised egg - can result in a human
2. Unfertilised egg - can not result in a human
3. About to be fertilised egg - an egg that's not fertilised, see #2. (If egg becomes fertilised, see #1)

Is that about it?

Now, what about that is confusing to you?

Doubting Didymus

LWF.

You are the one looking for a magical human/inhuman boundary. I say quite simply that there is no such thing. Humanity does not pop into existance at a given time. It develops with gestation (something that should be obvious to any atheist that lacks a belief in a soul) A simple cell is just that: a simple cell. It is a bunch of proteins and lipids. A human is a thinking feeling being. If I destroy an acorn I am not felling a tree.

I have no burden of proof to demonstrate the negative of YOUR claim that a fertilised cell is a human. If that were true, I may as well say that it is YOUR responsibility to disprove my claim that every sperm is a human. Burden of proof is on the positive claim, not the negative. Your distinctions that a sperm does not posess a complete genome, or that biologists place a taxonomic name of some description on it do not hold water with me. If left to its own ends, a sperm (at least one per egg) is going to become a human. That gives the collective ejaculate the same 'potential' as any fertilised egg. Thus, there is no distinction in terms of human-ness between an ejaculate an a zygote, and contraception is murder.

LordSnooty

If it thinks, it's a human.

Paul

Doubting Didymus

Even this is problematic, as 'thinking' does not suddenly appear at some trimester or other, but develops as slowly as everything else. I generally agree with you, but the anti abortionist dream of a hard and fast distinction between human and inhuman will never be realised.

LordSnooty

I'll tell you why, if you like.

A zygote does not think, it does not have emotions, it does not feel pain, it does not dream, it could not survive outside of the womb, it has no comprehension, no self awareness and no nervous system.

In short, it lacks every single property that makes us human. Yours is a petty argument of semantics, where any organism residing under the umbrella term of 'homo sapiens' is of the same value as any other.

To me, the idea that a single-cell zygote could be of equal value to a grown adult is practically beyond belief.

Paul

Doubting Didymus

Lordsnooty: excellent point, and a question I want answered.

Can any anti-abortionist point to some quality that makes us human, that is also posessed by a zygote? Answer carefully, because if you point to the 'full genome' I will point to your cheek cells.

SmartBlonde57

Yep. Me too.

I consider myself "pro-life". But I am also very much Pro-Choice.

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