Spanky

Columbus, you have pretty strong words for one that will never produce a child and the only negative you can get out of unsafe sex is an std (and this is not an insult to your sexual preference.)
I respect your so called respect for life. However, your respect for life is not as mine. I respect the womans life more than a potential (Yes, it is meerly a potential--even if already fertilized). But do not use libelous and unfounded sentences like these:
If I or my wife or you killed my child that would be a heinous crime and I would go to jail. Abortion is not killing a child. If it is you can start a new thread to enlighten us all. Abortion is aborting an (if I can qoute Alanis) unfortunate slight, not a child.
In summary, in your opinion you respect life but in mine I do not think you do because you disregard the woman (host) and want to force her to have a baby (which takes 9 months of oven baking to CREATE ONE). To me this is evil and not respectful of life. The one that IS is of more value than the one that could be.

laestrella

WTF? That is completely different and a really bad example.

1. Telling people not to burn me at the stake is a bit different than telling people what they can do with their own body. That would be like telling people not to drink alchohal because it kills brain cells. It's their choice... and doesn't effect me.

2. But good idea on how to kill me... if i didn't know any better i thought you might want to burn me at the stake. I can't stop you right? :notworthy: Must save self.....

Columbus

Please do believe me when I say that I understand that you and Karalora and Family Man, et al, mean well. I would prefer to believe what most of the people around me believes. But like Christian theology, I just can't believe something because someone insists that it is true. I hope we'll all continue a civil discussion.

If you'd read my previous post you'd have noticed that I did produce a child. I can't get an STD because I have been in a monogamous relationship for years. I do know what an insult to my orientation is and this is one. You are claiming that my opinion is of less importance because I'm gay. Most Right to Life people do that also. It's an insult then too.


[QUOTE]I respect your so called respect for life. However, your respect for life is not as mine. I respect the womans life more than a potential (Yes, it is meerly a potential--even if already fertilized). But do not use libelous and unfounded sentences like these:
I respect everybody's life. Niether you nor anyone else has shown me a good reason to believe that human life is something that a fetus acquires after conception. Before conception the egg and sperm are a potential human. Afterwards they have become a human "in process".
"Libelous" is an adjective describing a statement about someone or some group that is false and injurious. I haven't done either one here. "Unfounded" is an adjective describing a statement that has no basis in truth. Mine was not. If you have an adjective that is true I'll talk about it. If you think I'm mistaken tell me why. But don't accuse me of libel unless you are prepared to back the accusation up.




If you kill me, or your wife kills you, or someone else entirely kills your child, whoever does the killing has made themselves liable. If anyone chooses the destuction of a life they have done wrong, doesn't matter who is killing who.


Haven't heard Ms Morrisette in awhile. Thanks! Jagged Little Pill is screaming in the CD player as I write this.

"will she go down on you in a theatre... does she speak eloquently?... an' will she have your baby...I'm sure she'll make an excellent mother", a true pinnacle of American culture.

Alanis is really fun as a musician, but she is not a moral teacher of any particular note.

(oh cool, Hand In My Pocket just started)

Claiming that abortion is different from killing a person means you can distinguish between one set of weak and voiceless humans and some other set. Why do you think you can do that, exactly? I'm asking sincerely for an answer as precise as befits a question of life and death. Perhaps you can do better than a vague and unsupported assertion like "Abortion is not killing a child"
In summary I respect life, and I respect humans individually. I would never force any human to have a baby. But I will defend a human's right to a healthy gestation period when someone else has brought them into the world. Once born the child is no longer the responsibility of the parents alone. We all have responsibility for his/her safe and healthy upbringing. For the first few months of everyone's life they are dependant upon their parents. This does not make them any less human.

Tom
~ps I keep refering to "parents", not mother. Every child has two parents, and just because it is easier for the father to walk away doesn't mean it is any less immoral.~




fukkin A ....ten thousand spoons, when what you really need is a knife...

PEEDNAR

laestrella,

Your response hints that you may in fact be burning (of a different species) before posting.

Your contention is that you are not in the place to tell people what to do with their lives. Therefor under the constraints of this premise it IS in fact true that it is not your place to tell people what to do whether they're killing someone in their body as you put it, or killing you.

Your response boils down to "no but abortion is different than murder" regardless of the fact that it is not, in fact, your place to dictate what others do in their life. Nevermind the drunk inquisitors that now have it out for you.

raccoon

Inquisition threatens the security and safety of people who make up a society that GIVES rights. Society is only an imagined, abstract entity; in reality, it's just a group of individuals working together under a set of agreed upon values and rules.

Voluntary abortion does not threaten any member of any given society; in fact, it empowers them by giving them choice. So I can understand why society gives right to abortion, and not right to existence and development of any random fetus/ zygote/ sperm/ egg...

Karalora

We have to look at what distinguishes humans from other (known) forms of life, aside from the fact that they are us. And I think at the bottom it boils down to intelligence and sentience. Consciousness is a remarkable phenomenon that makes every creature that possesses it qualitatively unique. Every mind is one-of-a-kind, and what is one-of-a-kind is not lightly destroyed.

The thing is, while born humans have minds, human feti before the third trimester do not. Their brains simply are not developed enough. True, the potential for sentience is there. It is even, in most cases, a probable outcome if the fetus is left alone. But we do not grant rights or privileges based on potential alone.

B_Sharp

sentience smentience lol
At what age were you consciously aware?? 10 years old? 15 maybe, 20 yeards old? You have 'memories' of age 5 but you were reactionary, not conscious aware.

Since animals differ from humans because they are reactionary only, we should allow aborting of humans up until the age of 15 years old.

Either human life has higher value or not. Else the reasoning for which humans are more valuable than others becomes quite twisted.

Spanky

Sorry, I must have skimmed over that one. My bad

That was not an insult to your orientation. I have many gay friends (and have had in other states I have lived in) and in no way shape or form did I say this to insult you or insinuate that you have no say in the matter. My point and emphasis was that your words are very strong for being in that position (I would speak to a heterosexual man the same way, sir!).

Agree. After fertilization we begin what is called reproduction. However, once the "producing" is done then the product is finally realized and there.

Thank you for the lesson in english.
Libelous is a perfect adjective in response to what you wrote because you said "But legal license to kill your children is not responsible for a higher standard of living. When you used "your" you were referring to women (someone or some group) and in an inflammatory way by saying they are killers. Killers of humans are murderers, etc. Libelous. Check this out too, I googled it and thought is was a good read http://www.postfun.com/pfp/features/...loodlibel.html
Unfounded was used correctly, also. ". . .to kill your children" is why it is an unfounded accusation. There are no children involved when an abortion is performed. Children breath air, shit, cry, dream, eat, sleep (mine finally is), etc. This is why science has named the stages of the development of a fertalized egg (blast, zygt, embryo, fetus). To me it is unfounded what you said.
I mentioned the song "uninvited" because I think she is speaking of abortion in it and how she(women) feels. Alanis is no moral teacher and I never said that. Read the words sometime, I find you will agree.

Again, sorry if you felt I insulted you. You know how these conversations can turn :devil1: (ugly) in an instant. Peace!

Columbus

aside from the fact that they are us. How can you just dismiss this? It's the most important point.
You imply that you value intelligence, sentience, and consciouness, but you haven't said why. You also imply that you value these things, but not humanity. I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, just explain what they seem to mean. Why do you value what you do?
Yes, every mind is unique. But so is every earthworm. The conciousness of a child dying of hunger on the other side of the world doesn't affect you in any way. Why do you value it more than a one celled person who hasn't yet achieved conciousness?

We don't "grant" rights at all. That's what makes them different from priviledges. Either you believe that each person should go on living or you don't. If you do, you must define human in a meaningful way. Attributes like intelligence or consciousness, that people have in wildly varying degrees, don't seem like very good ways to define human. Depending upon our perception of who has enough of them to warrant protection has resulted in everything from genocide to killing female babies. Since each and every one of us is a being that began as a zygote I can see no logical way to deny the humanity of the next zygote to come along without denying the value of humanity over all. Humans become valuable only to the extent to which they are useful or we are emotionally attached. They have no inherent value.

Tom

Columbus

I don't want the conversation to turn ugly either. I felt sure that the insult was unintended. I'm a little touchy about the "what would a gay man know about it anyway?" form of dismissing my beliefs. It happens to me a lot.

I skimmed through your link. Nothing to do with me. I'm not a theist. I support Planned Parenthood because they prevent abortions by providing information, contraceptives, and general empowerment. I wish more women would go there before they were pregnant(with their male partners). When PP moved to their new office I donated about 1500 dollars worth of framed prints in the hope that a more comfortable environment would encourage people to take advantage of what those ladies have to offer.
They get picketed every Saturday morning. I have considered going with a "Queer Atheist for Life" sign.

What Karalora posted was:
What I replied was:
What I meant was that the rise in abortion rates over the last half-century is not any more responsible for rising Western standards of living than it is for the over all increase in starvation rates. Nothing libelous, and quite well founded.
I see a stronger connection between starvation and abortion. Both are the result of people not valuing other people, except to the extent that they are useful.

I really can empathize with the "Uninvited". I once drove my sister to an abortion clinic. I didn't want to but she had no-one else who would. If I'd turned her down, she'd have hitch-hiked.
My own child died a month after being conceived. I was happy to be free from the responsibility, but my child had died! Nothing is simple, you have to do your best to figure out what is right. I can also empathize with people who have not yet become valued by anybody and so might be killed. While I was driving her to the clinic I was thinking about my own child who had died for no apparent reason. She was off to kill her child because pregnancy wasn't in her plans for that year. A couple of years later she married the father of that child, because she was pregnant again. Now that child, whose name is David, wants to go to Iraq and save America from terrorists. Life is messy. You have to decide what you believe is right, and stick to it, while always realizing that you could be wrong and so must listen to people who disagree with you.

Peace,
Tom