Jane Roe to ask Supremes to vacate Roe v. Wade

[Ben Kenobi]

An utterly pointless and fatuous comparison, given the inherent differences between getting pregnant, giving birth and helping someone to have an abortion.

What are these inherent differences?

Of course it also ignores the accumulation of centuries of medical knowledge and legal bars/religious proscription of abortion.

How does this justify our current lack of knowledge of the entirety of complications surrounding abortion? We have had 50 years to study legal abortion, and why is it that deaths are still not reported in the US with the same scrutiny as those deaths in childbirth?

Why does this supposed right to privacy supercede the scrutiny society demands of all other surgical procedures? I am not talking about revealing names or patient histories. Rather, I am looking for accurate medical data as is found in civilised countries like Finland.

Perhaps we should address the differences between having a legal abortion in a clinical sterile environment and resorting to a knitting needle in a motel room.

How do we know that abortions take place in a sterile environment in the clinics?

[Whaleboy]

How do we know that abortions take place in a sterile environment in the clinics?

Oh come on! It's a reasonable supposition if ever there was such a thing!

You keep referring to foetuses as children but consistently fail to qualify that... why should we regard a foetus as a child, and why from conception? Despite flooding people with meaningless rhetoric and stupid questions, you need to answer this fundamental question and provide an argument accordingly in order to proceed, since it is the primary premise of your argument.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
How do we know that abortions take place in a sterile environment in the clinics?

That can be inferred from low percentage of women who got infections from abortion operations.

[beingofone]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


Oh come on! It's a reasonable supposition if ever there was such a thing!

You keep referring to foetuses as children but consistently fail to qualify that... why should we regard a foetus as a child, and why from conception? Despite flooding people with meaningless rhetoric and stupid questions, you need to answer this fundamental question and provide an argument accordingly in order to proceed, since it is the primary premise of your argument.

It's a reasonable supposition if ever there was such a thing to believe you were a fetus at one time. Or could I be reaching and grasping for logic and reason here?

A question none of you can answer is when your life began but you are so sure you know when it is someone else life.

[Whaleboy]

It's a reasonable supposition if ever there was such a thing to believe you were a fetus at one time. Or could I be reaching and grasping for logic and reason here?

What does that have to do with the cleanliness of clinics?

A question none of you can answer is when your life began but you are so sure you know when it is someone else life.

WTF are you on about?

What does "our" lives have to do with others, and do you think there is a conflict between the two? Do you our ability to draw a line and answer the question, or even that the question is relevant to the debate?

[Mrs. Tuberski]

To be right on, there is no accurate record of when life begins, only when it ends. When everyone in this discussion realizes that moral and ethical decisions are indvidual. What is morally and ethically right for one isnt going to be for someone else. I believe my point here is that the decision of abortion should be left to the expecting parents, and if the parents cant agree then to the mother since she is the one who has to carry the child for nine months and undego the birth of the child. And i have never seen any picture or film of a fetus who has been aborted crying accept those drawn by an artist. The fetus actually lives in a sac of fluid so how would you tell tears from the amniotic fluid. Finally I have for all the abortion activists whether it be pro choice or life. What do you suggest when the child has died in utero which has happened more often then you think. Do you think this women should be forced to carry and delivery this dead child or is an abortion ok then?

[chequita guevara]

Life doesn't begin. It changes from one form to another, then it dies. Clearly the sperm and egg are alive prior to conception. But I don't see pro-lifers wailing and gnashing at the teeth every time a sperm is spilled without having a chance to fertilize an egg. Nor do they seem to be wrenching their hands everytime a woman has her period. Though if they got their way on abortion, overturning Griswald would be next.

The question then is, at what point do we say that human tissue becomes an human being? For pro-lifers, that point is fertilization. For pro-choice people, it's somewhere further down the line. For some religions, it doesn't even take place until after birth.

Despite the insistence of many in the pro-choice movement, I do think this is an issue for society to determine. Currently, society feels that the choice of whether or not to terminate a pregancy should be left up to the mother or the parents of a minor mother. I happen to agree with that.

[Whaleboy]

To be right on, there is no accurate record of when life begins, only when it ends. When everyone in this discussion realizes that moral and ethical decisions are indvidual. What is morally and ethically right for one isnt going to be for someone else. I believe my point here is that the decision of abortion should be left to the expecting parents, and if the parents cant agree then to the mother since she is the one who has to carry the child for nine months and undego the birth of the child.

Absolutely! (well relatively but I won't tell if you don't).

My argument is that whether or not a foetus is a being (there is a difference in definition if not application between lifeform, being and person) depends upon perception, and who is better placed than the mother? The decision should logically rest with the mother, with abortion being a legal option for her. Obviously a safeguard would be one of self-evidence, i.e., is the foetus's sentience self-evident to the doctor performing the operation (say, 8 or 9 months in), but obviously if you're going to establish a baseline you need to be conservative there, so instead of six months I'd say seven or so etc.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

I agree with what you are saying. To take a middle stand in this debate is also contradictory. I believe the woman has a choice with her body however late term abortions thats a different story. Unless the child is severely retarded and multiple birth defects i dont agree. If your pregnant and carried a fetus for 6 months or more then the woman should carry thru with the child birth. Since by that time she must deliever the product of conceptuion any way. ( It seems harsh by calling the fetus a product of conception but in the medical reality that is what it is.)

[Berzerker]

Life doesn't begin. It changes from one form to another, then it dies. Clearly the sperm and egg are alive prior to conception

But the union of sperm and egg is the beginning of a new life form, one that would not exist without conception.

[Whaleboy]

But the union of sperm and egg is the beginning of a new life form, one that would not exist without conception.

Yes but the same could be said for a lentil seed or an amoeba, hence the distinction between any old lifeform, a being, and a person. The latter case is more a case of "cogito ergo sum", being is a good topic for debate. However virtue of conception alone is insufficient to present such an argument, unless you want to claim that the killing of any cell is murder, and then face the choice of living on milk for the rest of your life, hypocrisy, or starvation.

[Berzerker]

A fertilised egg is not just any cell. And so what if other life forms begin at "conception" too? How does that prove human life doesn't begin at conception?

[Whaleboy]

Yes a fertilised egg is pretty much just another cell... what is there in the biological properties of that cell that gives it some metaphysical property that other cells do not?

Does the egg exhibit the properties of being?

The point is to say that the properties of the egg are no different to those of any other cell, why treat it differently? Am I committing murder by munching on the stick of celery sticking out of my mouth like a Cuban?

If you want to find a solution to the abortion problem, I suggest you devote some energies to asking yourself the question "What is human life", and then work up from there. Until then all we'll be able to do is a pissing match with question marks and frustration with the other sides ignorance of our definitions. And one sides ignorance of microbiology .

[OneFootInTheGrave]

abortion is already solved, and it's not a problem... abortion is a convenient political platform that's all there is to it...

[Whaleboy]

Very true

Church and state separation