Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice: Apolyton Debate #2

[Stefu]

The Opening Statement for Voices of Life

Well, looks like Voices of Choice got to make their statement first. Well, I'm still going to do it like that was not posted, since I feel opening statements should be just that - both team's views out in the open, ready to be picked apart and defended. Thus, I'll leave dissecting SITS's post further.

I'll have to comment on one part, tho. SITS' post mostly didn't seem to deal wth abortion. Instead, it did contain much pro-lifer bashing, not to forget assumptions about pro-life beliefs (I, for example, consider myself both anti-DP and pro-life.) Almost unexceptedly clinic bombers and doctor assassins weren't brought out in the open. Oh well, I hope this one does deal more with abortion.

Oh, and I'd like to remind that my pro-life views may be different from the views of other people, and most likely are.

Now, there are many ways to look to abortion issue. There are people who like to argue women's rights, and there are people who like to argue erosion of morals in the society. However, the way I see it, there is one issue that is most important of all. In fact, the way I see it, this issue is the bedrock of whole abortion debate. It's a simple question - is foetus worthy of human rights we grant to other human beings, or is it simply a clump of cells? In the first case, allowing abortion is allowing a mass murder of huge proportions to happen, in the second case, abortions should be allowed since doing otherwise would hurt people's freedoms.

The way I see it, we as people are more than sum of our parts. There is something there that keeps us going, and it's not just a ridiculously expensive energy drink. You can call it a soul, call it awareness, call it something else. I like to think it as the driver of my body and mind. It's the part that... well, it's kind of hard to explain... it's the thing that makes it sure we command our own bodies and brains, and we don't do so with some other person's body and brain. It's the part that makes us us. For purposes of this post, we'll call it a soul.

Let's have an example. Think of a instant matter transmitter. It shouldn't be hard to do - there have been examples of those in multiple science fiction series. We are talking about a machine which can, in theory, transfer us long distances in a blink of an eye - just walk into the transmitter booth in New York, and in a second, you'll walk out of transmitter booth in Sydney. Of course, matter isn't transmitted - the machine merely throughoutly reads our bodies, then transmits a signal to another place, where similar body is composed, and then disposes of the old body. Think of machine like this being made. There's a test - one scientist walks into a booth, and instantly walks out of another booth, seemingly alive and similar to what he was before transmission. Think of the implications. You could teleport yourself instantly. Dream of humankind. And now's the question - would you use it?

I absolutely wouldn't, and I would eagerly recommend others to not do so, too. It would, in other person's view, look like people are same when they step into the transmitter as they are to when they step out. However, in my view, it's not the same person. It's that person's exact clone, freshly created, but the original person would be dead. And so would I be, if I set my foot to that hellish machine. Person's soul, the part that allows us to command our bodies, is not in the new body - it's gone.

Now we're getting to implications with abortion debate. It's this 'soul' that makes us persons, and thus, people worthy of human rights. But at what point does this appear? It's ridiculous to say that it appears when a person is born, because this would require outside intervention, like a God willing to insert a personally crafted soul in every human being at the moment of their birth. Therefore, we must assume it becomes a part of us early, as early as the moment sperm and egg unify and new human begins to develop. (I personally would put this point at the moment first brain cells start to develop, but I think team should argue as one.) And thus, killing a fetus would be killing a person, and thus a crime comparable to killing a fully developed human being.

Most anything else is sidestepping. Women's right to choose? We don't grant people the right to kill other people, and we most certainly don't grant people the right to kill other people who haven't done anything to harm them. And baby hasn't done anything to harm his or her mother, not even in case of rape - the way baby got started wasn't his/her fault.

Krhm. That's my personal view about wrongness of abortion. If some other member has different view about why abortion is wrong, then he is encouraged to post them.

And that is all, your honor.

[Stefu]

1) Unless the Pro-Lifers say that veganism is the way to go then they concede that there are degrees of life.

Conceeding there are different degrees of life doesn't necessarily lead to conclusion that some degrees of human life would be unworthier than others. And you may have noticed we don't place animals on same scale as humans.

2) Unless the Pro-Lifers are against the killing of any human being in any situation then they concede that there are legitimate reasons for human beings to be killed.

Oh, there are legitimate reasons for human beings to being killed. There is self-defense, where we a person is stopping himself from being killed. There's defensive war, which is basically self-defense on larger scale. DP supporters would argue that death penalty is premature self-defense, ie. weeding out those who have shown they can kill and thus could kill again. And there's one form of abortion that is essentially self-defense - abortion done to save the life of mother. Allowing this kind of abortion, you surely have noticed, is accepted by clear majority if not all of pro-lifers.

3) Pro-Life is about control and the oppression of women.

Pro-Choice is about allowing mass murder of babies There, two can play game is insult and assumption.

4) A pregnant woman should have the same basic rights to her body as is extended to living human beings.

Do I have the right to use my hand? Yes. Do I have the right to use my hand to pick up a knife? Yes. Do I have the right to use my hand to connect the knife with your heart? Most definitely no. We give living human beings rights, but we don't give them rights to harm other people. A pregnant woman can control her body, but she can't control it in a way that would harm the baby in her womb.

5) It is not right for men to impose their beliefs on an issue that cannot apply to them.

Ever seen the movie where Arnold Swartzhenegger was impregnated? There was one guy to whom the issue *did* apply.

But seriously, you could say this about anything. We can't impose our beliefs about gun control because we don't own a gun. We can't impose our beliefs about death penalty because we haven't had anyone we known executed of murdered with murderer being executed. We impose our beliefs about income taxes if we are outside the brackets, we impose our beliefs about gay marriage since we're not gay, we can't impose our beliefs about school prayer since we aren't Christian.

6) Buk kake is not a multiple-homicide.

This is just ridiculous. You already acknowledged pro-lifers believe life begins at connection of sperm cell and egg. Bukkake, at least if I've understood the term completely, doesn't involve connection of sperm cell and egg at any point, unless I've forgotten what it means and those Japanese people do some really sick pornography.

7) A foetus becomes a human being (i.e. having the same rights) when it becomes independent from the woman’s body. To state otherwise would mean that the women’s right to life is less than a single cell.

Why does a fetus become a human being when it becomes independent from woman's body? What, does God touch it with His magic finger and give him the gift of life? If a baby is born 3 weeks early from counted date, is it human? Well, if it is, then why isn't baby of same age that hasn't been born yet one? And I hope you realize fetuses can be of more than single cell.

8) Abortion is a natural mechanism that promotes the survival of the race. A woman choosing to abort a foetus because she could not love the child it might become is a perfectly valid survival instinct.

Some claim that rape is a natural mechanism that gives males with small change of spreading their genetic material around a chance to do so. There are also those claiming that when a mother kills a born baby, it's also a natural mechanism. Still, we don't allow those. People don't always have to obey mechanisms that we got from the days we were more monkey-like than nowadays. These days, we can actually understand concepts like rights of people, even if our natural insticts don't.

9) Allowing a woman to have the freedom to choose what she does with her body means that she isn’t forced to bring a child into the world against her will. That is a right that needs to be protected.

Basically, you've just rehashed your argument nr. 4. We don't allow people the right to use the freedom to choose what to do with their bodies if it means allowing them to kill other people, and we shouldn't allow them to do so to unborn babies, either.

[Poppa Bear]

Comment

Since normally only liberals choose to have abortions I am definately pro-choice!

[Stefu]

Uhm... there's a separate comments thread for this debate.

[yin26]

Thank you gentlemen for the very intriguing opening statments. Since Stefu has already posted one rebuttal for his team, I will now ask for a rebuttal from one of the following members:

Ramo, bondetamp, devilmunchkin, SITS (since Stefu did a rebuttal already, this is fair...but SITS please ask your team if they would like to rebut first).

At this point, the teams should rebut each other IN TURNS, making sure every member waits for his turn so members are posting generally equal numbers of times. Good luck all!

[SITS]

Re: The Opening Statement for Voices of Life

Originally posted by Stefu

I'll have to comment on one part, tho. SITS' post mostly didn't seem to deal wth abortion. Instead, it did contain much pro-lifer bashing, not to forget assumptions about pro-life beliefs (I, for example, consider myself both anti-DP and pro-life.) Almost unexceptedly clinic bombers and doctor assassins weren't brought out in the open. Oh well, I hope this one does deal more with abortion.

As I said in my post Pro-Choice is not about abortion it is about choice which is what I talked about. My assertion is that Pro-Life is about taking that choice away. Also I don't believe I made assumptions about Pro-Life beliefs the point I was making is that if Pro-Lifers aren't vegans/pacifists/against the dp then they have to accept that there are degrees of life and that there are legitmate reasons to kill human beings.

And since you bring it up the clinic bombers etc are a perfect example of how the Pro-Life argument can lose sight of the woman being a person, having her own rights.

Oh, and I'd like to remind that my pro-life views may be different from the views of other people, and most likely are.

No dice. Either the views that are expressed are that of the team or it shouldn't be expressed. Otherwise when a view is challenged then someone can turn round and say, that wasn't the teams view so it doesn't count. Team Choice is making a lot of effort to co-ordinate our views before we express them. We will take all views expressed as that of the team not of the individual.

[QUOTE]
Now, there are many ways to look to abortion issue. There are people who like to argue women's rights, and there are people who like to argue erosion of morals in the society. However, the way I see it, there is one issue that is most important of all. In fact, the way I see it, this issue is the bedrock of whole abortion debate. It's a simple question - is foetus worthy of human rights we grant to other human beings, or is it simply a clump of cells? In the first case, allowing abortion is allowing a mass murder of huge proportions to happen, in the second case, abortions should be allowed since doing otherwise would hurt people's freedoms.

The way I see it, we as people are more than sum of our parts. There is something there that keeps us going, and it's not just a ridiculously expensive energy drink. You can call it a soul, call it awareness, call it something else. I like to think it as the driver of my body and mind. It's the part that... well, it's kind of hard to explain... it's the thing that makes it sure we command our own bodies and brains, and we don't do so with some other person's body and brain. It's the part that makes us us. For purposes of this post, we'll call it a soul.[QUOTE]

So Team Pro-Life are saying that human beings have souls and that soul is created/enters the foetus when it is a single cell so therefore the foetus is human and should be protected. As Team Pro-Life has brought this in then it is up to them to prove there is a soul and that it enters this single cell. Ah, here we go....

Let's have an example. Think of a instant matter transmitter. It shouldn't be hard to do - there have been examples of those in multiple science fiction series. We are talking about a machine which can, in theory, transfer us long distances in a blink of an eye - just walk into the transmitter booth in New York, and in a second, you'll walk out of transmitter booth in Sydney. Of course, matter isn't transmitted - the machine merely throughoutly reads our bodies, then transmits a signal to another place, where similar body is composed, and then disposes of the old body. Think of machine like this being made. There's a test - one scientist walks into a booth, and instantly walks out of another booth, seemingly alive and similar to what he was before transmission. Think of the implications. You could teleport yourself instantly. Dream of humankind. And now's the question - would you use it?

I absolutely wouldn't, and I would eagerly recommend others to not do so, too. It would, in other person's view, look like people are same when they step into the transmitter as they are to when they step out. However, in my view, it's not the same person. It's that person's exact clone, freshly created, but the original person would be dead. And so would I be, if I set my foot to that hellish machine. Person's soul, the part that allows us to command our bodies, is not in the new body - it's gone.

So the Team Pro-Lifers assertion is that an instant matter transmitter machine proves that there is a soul. Hmm...

1) No such machine exsists
2) As such a machine has never been used then there is no proof that a 'soul' cannot be transmitted or that there is a soul to be transmitted.

This is not proof of a soul. I would like the Pro-Life team to prove that there is a soul and that animals have no soul. If they can restrict themselves to science rather than science-fiction I would very much appreciate it.

Now we're getting to implications with abortion debate. It's this 'soul' that makes us persons, and thus, people worthy of human rights. But at what point does this appear? It's ridiculous to say that it appears when a person is born, because this would require outside intervention, like a God willing to insert a personally crafted soul in every human being at the moment of their birth. Therefore, we must assume it becomes a part of us early, as early as the moment sperm and egg unify and new human begins to develop. (I personally would put this point at the moment first brain cells start to develop, but I think team should argue as one.) And thus, killing a fetus would be killing a person, and thus a crime comparable to killing a fully developed human being.

There has been no proof of a soul offered by Pro-Life. As the definition of life given by Pro-Life was that it began from conception I will deal with that rather than any examples of disagreement within the Pro-Life team.

Are the Pro-Life team saying there is a god? Are they prepared to prove this? I do not accept that a foetus is a fully fledged person when it starts as a single cell. There is no proof that a 'soul' enters this cell then, later or ever. There is no proof that the foetus is a person. It is the Pro-Choice assertion that until the foetus is independent of the womans body then it cannot be considered to have more rights than the woman. Otherwise it is a part of the womans body and it is the woman that has the rights.

Most anything else is sidestepping. Women's right to choose? We don't grant people the right to kill other people, and we most certainly don't grant people the right to kill other people who haven't done anything to harm them. And baby hasn't done anything to harm his or her mother, not even in case of rape - the way baby got started wasn't his/her fault.

Krhm. That's my personal view about wrongness of abortion. If some other member has different view about why abortion is wrong, then he is encouraged to post them.

And that is all, your honor.

Promoting the choice and freedom of a woman is not sidestepping. Pro-Choice is the title of a our team so it cannot be sidestepping if we concentrate on that.

We do grant people the right to kill other people. Ask the Afghans or Mr McVeigh. And we do grant people the right to kill someone that hasn't done anything to them - I'm sure that the McVeigh's excutioner wasn't wronged by McVeigh.

I agree we shouldn't kill babies, babies are innocent. But we are talking about terminating foetuses that are a part of a womans body. The foetus isn't independent of that body so the woman has more rights than the foetus. I agree that a BABY that is born from a rapist is innocent and shouldn't be killed for the crimes of the father. As a single cell the rights of the woman is much more important.

Originally posted by Stefu


Conceeding there are different degrees of life doesn't necessarily lead to conclusion that some degrees of human life would be unworthier than others. And you may have noticed we don't place animals on same scale as humans.

Conceding that there are different degrees of life is very important. If we are saying there are degrees of life then we are limiting what pro-life means. It becomes Pro-this bit of life not life itself. We then come into the definition of what life is. Your team says it is a single cell that starts at conception. (you say otherwise...) Having a sliding scale of life allows us to debate when that begins.

Oh, there are legitimate reasons for human beings to being killed. There is self-defense, where we a person is stopping himself from being killed. There's defensive war, which is basically self-defense on larger scale. DP supporters would argue that death penalty is premature self-defense, ie. weeding out those who have shown they can kill and thus could kill again. And there's one form of abortion that is essentially self-defense - abortion done to save the life of mother. Allowing this kind of abortion, you surely have noticed, is accepted by clear majority if not all of pro-lifers.

I agree that there are legitimate reasons to kill a human being and I'm glad you are conceding that. I believe that argument goes against your argument that human life is special with a 'soul' as you are saying it is ok to kill humans.

Also you concede that it is ok to kill in self-defence. In your terms (ie I'm not conceding that a foetus is a human being) then it would be ok for a woman to 'kill' the foetus in self-defence. In fact you concede that abortion is ok in certain circumstances which means that you are saying that the woman's rights are more important than the foetus. Which is what the Pro-Choice argument is about. Not sure what we are debating here!

As to 'killing' the foetus in self-defence, in YOUR terms you can argue that the woman terminating the foetus is an act of self-defence as she doesn't not want a thing inside her changing her body, feeding off her, giving her piles etc. So from your own argument abortion is ok. Thank you!

Pro-Choice is about allowing mass murder of babies There, two can play game is insult and assumption.

I assure you I was not trying to insult you. Pro-Life is about the foetus having more rights than a woman. This is the oppression of the rights of women.

To answer your point Pro-Choice does not advocate mass murder as we don't consider the foetus to be a person.

Do I have the right to use my hand? Yes. Do I have the right to use my hand to pick up a knife? Yes. Do I have the right to use my hand to connect the knife with your heart? Most definitely no. We give living human beings rights, but we don't give them rights to harm other people. A pregnant woman can control her body, but she can't control it in a way that would harm the baby in her womb.

You have the right to connect that hand and knife to your own heart if you so wish. The foetus is part of the womans body and until it becomes independently seperate from that womans body then her rights are greater. I have the right to cut my own finger off if I so wish I do not have the right to cut yours off as it isn't part of my body. There is no baby in her womb - it is a foetus. It becomes a baby when it is born. When a woman is pregnant she has to change her lifestyle because of the thing growing inside her. She has the control and the right to decide if that thing is allowed to be born or not as it is her body.

You say she can't do anything to harm that 'baby' - so she must give up smoking, drinking, skiing etc because if she harms that 'baby' then it would be a crime? The rights of the woman should be greater than the rights of a single cell.

Ever seen the movie where Arnold Swartzhenegger was impregnated? There was one guy to whom the issue *did* apply.

But seriously, you could say this about anything. We can't impose our beliefs about gun control because we don't own a gun. We can't impose our beliefs about death penalty because we haven't had anyone we known executed of murdered with murderer being executed. We impose our beliefs about income taxes if we are outside the brackets, we impose our beliefs about gay marriage since we're not gay, we can't impose our beliefs about school prayer since we aren't Christian.

I love the examples you bring up as proof! Oh, I see the smilie so you weren't being serious....

As to your example about gun control. You can own a gun, whether you choose to have one or not is your choice! You cannot choose to be pregnant, it is not possible. Please note I did not say only pregnant woman have a valid view on abortion but I did say women and not men have a valid view on abortion.

I accept we impose our beliefs on others but my point is that is wrong not right.

This is just ridiculous. You already acknowledged pro-lifers believe life begins at connection of sperm cell and egg. Bukkake, at least if I've understood the term completely, doesn't involve connection of sperm cell and egg at any point, unless I've forgotten what it means and those Japanese people do some really sick pornography.

Ridiculous? So you confirm that Buk kake is not mass murder then?

Why does a fetus become a human being when it becomes independent from woman's body? What, does God touch it with His magic finger and give him the gift of life? If a baby is born 3 weeks early from counted date, is it human? Well, if it is, then why isn't baby of same age that hasn't been born yet one? And I hope you realize fetuses can be of more than single cell.

The point is unless the foetus is independent of the woman then the womans rights are more important than it. The act itself of being born makes the foetus into a baby as it is independent of the woman. Otherwise it is just a part of the womans body and it is her right to terminate it if she so wishes.

Some claim that rape is a natural mechanism that gives males with small change of spreading their genetic material around a chance to do so. There are also those claiming that when a mother kills a born baby, it's also a natural mechanism. Still, we don't allow those. People don't always have to obey mechanisms that we got from the days we were more monkey-like than nowadays. These days, we can actually understand concepts like rights of people, even if our natural insticts don't.

The difference here is that the mechanism that causes a miscarriage is what affects the womans body and no-one elses. The body rejects the foetus for good survival reasons. So what I'm saying is that the termination of the foetus is a natural occurance that happens in nature. So therefore the termination of the foetus cannot be viewed morally as it only affects that persons body and does not take the rights away of someone else. If you say that the foetus is human then you view is that the woman should be prosecuted for having a miscarriage. Not fair is it?

Basically, you've just rehashed your argument nr. 4. We don't allow people the right to use the freedom to choose what to do with their bodies if it means allowing them to kill other people, and we shouldn't allow them to do so to unborn babies, either.

It is similar to point 4 but the difference is that the rights of the woman should be protected. Until the foetus is born it is not a baby and the rights of the woman is more important.



OK end of rebuttal.

Edit: Combined two posts into one at the request of Team Pro-Life. The only changes I've made are to take the link from the two posts out and mentioning that dm is next, otherwise it is as right as before.

[SITS]

I terminated this post and added it to the previous one.

[Stefu]

Uhm... SITS? I thought this went like this:

1. Your opening statement
2. My opening statement
3. My rebuttal of your opening statement
4. Your rebuttal of my opening statement
5. Someone else's (from the Choice team) rebuttal of my rebuttal
6. Someone else's (from the Life team) rebuttal of your rebuttal
7. Someone else's (from the Choice team) rebuttal of rebuttal's rebuttal
8. Someone else's (from the Life team) rebuttal of rebuttal's rebuttal

And so on.

So, to give other people a chance to post, too, I suggest you edit out the second post, and let the next person of your team to post a rebuttal instead.

[our_man]

I get the impression the pro-choice team are a little confused from reading SITS post. He claims that pro-choice is not about abortion, but about the right to choose. The pro-choice argument is about choosing whether you can have an abortion or not. Any claims that there viewpoint has nothing to do with abortion suggest they're in the wrong thread.

I like eating meat. I think war is sometimes neccesary in order to maintain peace. I am against the death penalty. I guess one out of three ain't bad... Does this make me ill-qualified, or even a hypocrite, to take a stand on the sacred nature of human life? I think not. There are no degrees of life - either something is alive or not. There is a world of difference however between the value of the life of a cow and that of a human being, even if it is the unborn child in a mothers womb. A child that is aborted could have grown up to cure cancer, could have been President, could have done anything. However, I guess we'll never know. In contrast, I don't imagine when I'm tucking into a good burger that the cow I'm eating could have been the one to liberate his brethern from the cruel yolk of human tyranny...

As Stefu quite clearly stated, his instant matter transmitter was an example, an illustration of a point. I personally think the greatest argument for a soul is our conscience and our sense of morality. Unlike animals, we don't have the luxury of relying on instinct, we must decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong - and live with the consequences.

I guess the pro-choice team will now try and claim that the foetus does not display these characteristics, and maybe it doesn't, no-one knows for sure, but what I do know is that there is a tremendous amount of good in most of us that cannot be solely the result of our phenotype and genotype, there must be something else.

A foetus cannot simply be reduced to a part of a woman's body. For one thing, it cannot exactly be called a permanent physiological condition - it's only in there for nine months. A foetus isn't independent from it's mother - but then again, if a baby was left on its own to survive in the world, I couldn't imagine it lasting long. You cannot simply write off the foetus as a single cell - this cold and calculated view is the only way you can seem to justify your actions. You have to look at the future and the potential that the child has.

That's all I have time to address at the moment.l

[yin26]

Thank you, our_man!

Up next for Pro-Choice: Ramo, bondetamp, OR devilmunchkin (I think it's DM who's up?)

[DinoDoc]

Bump

I thought dm was impatient to post.

[Caesar the Great]

i'm pro death.....

[devilmunchkin]

doing spell check sorry

[devilmunchkin]

I get the impression the pro-choice team are a little confused from reading SITS post. He claims that pro-choice is not about abortion, but about the right to choose. The pro-choice argument is about choosing whether you can have an abortion or not. Any claims that there viewpoint has nothing to do with abortion suggest they're in the wrong thread.

But this isn't any old choice we're dealing with here. Just because a person (i.e. a woman) is pro-choice does not mean that they will choose to abort their own pregnancy but believe that every woman should have the right to decide what to do with her body, her life, and the fetus' existence. Pro-life not only disagrees with abortion, they are, in effect, taking away choice in order to dominate and hold their beliefs over others. Look around Washington and all the lobbyists. Pro-choice represents a broader base of options: as pro-life is one choice (to have), pro-choice opens up : to have or not to have.

I like eating meat. I think war is sometimes necessary in order to maintain peace. I am against the death penalty. I guess one out of three ain't bad... Does this make me ill-qualified, or even a hypocrite, to take a stand on the sacred nature of human life? I think not. There are no degrees of life - either something is alive or not.

I argue that until the fetus can support itself on it's own outside the mother's body that it is NOT alive. Virus' are not considered alive, unlike their Bacterian counterparts, because they cannot live outside or without the host. TO survive and multiply and thrive, virus' need a host period. The same goes for cancer which is a bundle of cells but in fact is not considered living. It's considered a disease that's part of a human organism that is alive. There are no distinctions between that as a fetus until it can thrive without need of being constantly attached to it's mother, or host. It feeds off of her in almost a parasitic fashion so that she must intake extra nutrients to support it. It too in a bundle of cells, perhaps no different than a cancer, which is what the mothers immune system often treats it like: it is foreign to her body and feeds off of her. It cannot survive without constant connection to her and therefore, it cannot receive rights of any kind because it is irrelevant.

There is a world of difference however between the value of the life of a cow and that of a human being, even if it is the unborn child in a mothers womb. A child that is aborted could have grown up to cure cancer, could have been President, could have done anything. However, I guess we'll never know. In contrast, I don't imagine when I'm tucking into a good burger that the cow I'm eating could have been the one to liberate his brethren from the cruel yolk of human tyranny...

Also, at the same time, this child could grow up in an abusive family because it is resented and not wanted. At the same time, abortion has been practiced among other cultures even prior to civilization and the settling of man into agricultural villages. The tribe had to be kept small in order to travel and hunt efficiently. Later, the practice of "pro-life" was adopted in order to spread population or religious belief. In today's present society, our earth is reaching the limit of how much population it can hold sufficiently. China even designates how many children a family can have (if any at all) and all non-approved pregnancies must be terminated. Point being, we need to value the lives on the earth that already exist and enable them to have rights before you assign rights to a non-living entity. Our-man argues that the fetus could invent things, well, so could humans that live on the streets or in third world countries that have not been educated or taught things. what about there rights?

As Stefu quite clearly stated, his instant matter transmitter was an example, an illustration of a point. I personally think the greatest argument for a soul is our conscience and our sense of morality. Unlike animals, we don't have the luxury of relying on instinct, we must decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong - and live with the consequences.

To argue that human's have a soul and that animals don't, cannot be proven. If both are life, then why does one form have soul and not the other? Here you move in the realm of religion in which there ARE no answers for nor any proof. In that case, one must argue that they decide morals for themselves, for the individual. If the individual decides what is morally and ethically right for themselves (because if there is a god, YOU DON"T decide for yourself. You don't choose. HE chooses for you.) then another human being does not, by your definition of rights, have the authority to tell that person their morals/ethics are incorrect or impose their own systems. If both animals, plants, bacteria, and fungi are life and loosing billions of their individual species everyday, the fetus should fall into that same category.

As far as instinct, I beg to differ. Humans may FIGHT their animal instinct, but they do have it. Ever acted on a hunch? Much of what is being written is written on a whim, on an instinct. Much of what has been discovered has been that. That is how man came to be and came to settle. Trial, error, and instinct. Our roots are there and by saying we have no animalian instinct is to say humanity is perfect, never indecisive, raised to god-like levels, an mechanical in emotion. Obviously this is not so. Love at first sight is instinct..everything about love and feelings are instinct.

A fetus cannot simply be reduced to a part of a woman's body. For one thing, it cannot exactly be called a permanent physiological condition - it's only in there for nine months. A fetus isn't independent from it's mother - but then again, if a baby was left on its own to survive in the world, I couldn't imagine it lasting long. You cannot simply write off the fetus as a single cell - this cold and calculated view is the only way you can seem to justify your actions. You have to look at the future and the potential that the child has.

For the time that it is her womb, the fetus is attached to the mother through an umbilical cord and trading fluids with her, thus becoming a part of her body, as any cancer would be.

To make conjectures about what will happen to the fetus is unfair. To say that it has rights is unfair when it is not alive nor can you project what MIGHT occur. This is science and such loose ended conjectures could go drastically wrong. Rather than invent some cure, that child could also be a mass murderer or the next Hitler. But at the times you are making this conjecture, the fetus is feeding off the mother as a temporary condition yet affecting her life forever.

A fetus is a part of a woman's body and if pro-choice argues that it is more, they must argue that other inferior life forms like bacteria, plants, animals etc are equal to that fetus and humans. Obviously this is not the case and none of that can be taken into consideration since saying anything has a soul is mere unproven theology and not applicable in the field of science.

[yin26]

My thanks to DM for the post. I imagine many will have found it worth the wait.

Now: d_dudy or November Adam is up. I very much look forward to the next rebutal as this is turning into a very interesting exchange indeed!