Anti-life crowd outraged that the unborn are cared for.

[nationalist]

Gnu, I just think that all of this is mere rationalization. If a zygote really has like you say a 40% chance to become a person, you're aborting it to end that 40% chance. You want to take away any possibility that the zygote will become life. Hey, if it wasn't going to become a life there would be no need for the abortion. The end goal is to deprive the possibilty of life. I think that that is wrong.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

Comparing the current state of America with a decaying Roman Empire is not only a tired old chestnut, it's a sign of a lack of either knowing history or of understanding modern society.

Can we at least find a more creative inaccurate analogy?

Yeah, Boris can't argue with any of my relavent points and has to resort to nitpicking! I win !

[chequita guevara]

You seem to be confusing what I said with what you want me to have said. The fact that the anti-choice movement is also anti-women doesn't mean that oscue little groups no one ever heard of can't also be pro-life and not anti-woman. Nor does it mean that supporters of the anti-choice movement have to be anti-woman. How many people really check on what their leaders say or do outside the narrow focus they support?

You continue with your policy of imputing far more than what I wrote to me. My points, however, remain. The leaders of the anti-choice movement are also opposed to women's equality. If you support women's equality, you support these people at your peril.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by nationalist
The end goal is to deprive the possibilty of life.

The point is that abstaining from intercourse has the same end goal.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by loinburger
The point is that abstaining from intercourse has the same end goal.

Which, of course, is why Catholicism and fundimentalist Christianity oppose birth control. Is not the command to "be fruitful and multiply?"

[nationalist]

Originally posted by loinburger

The law doesn't consider it murder to take a brain-dead patient off of life support, even though the patient is still biologically a human being--ethically the patient is already dead. Similarly, up until the third trimester an embryo/fetus isn't ethically a human, since it has no brain activity (it isn't even brain-dead, since its brain was never alive to begin with).

But it will be a human very soon. Brain dead people don't have a 99% chance of recovering normal brain patterns. This second trimester fetus will almost certainly develop those patterns. That's the difference between the two in my eyes: the fetus will almost certainly become a baby if left to develop naturally, the brain dead person would die if left to develop naturally. In a little over 3 months, that late 2nd trimeseter fetus will be a person.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by nationalist


Yeah, Boris can't argue with any of my relavent points and has to resort to nitpicking! I win !

My point was that any relavent point you might have is drowned out by using that awful cliche.

And I wasn't involved in that argument, anyway.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The fact that the anti-choice movement is also anti-women doesn't mean that oscue little groups no one ever heard of

How can you say that no one has ever heard of it? Because you haven't heard of it? Clarify yourself please.

If you support women's equality, you support these people at your peril.

I have to diagree with you here, Che. Not every leader who is against abortion is a misogynist.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by nationalist
But it will be a human very soon.

Question: Assuming that there are no extenuating circumstances, if a mother aborts her second trimester fetus, then who is the victim?

Answer: There is no victim. The second trimester fetus cannot be a victim, because it is not ethically a human being.

If your answer is "the third trimester fetus that will never be has been victimized," then every time you abstain from intercourse you are committing a crime against a potential third trimester fetus.

[monkspider]

I used to be mostly on the fence on the issue of abortion, but these days I would identify myself as pro-choice.
I think the best place to turn to solve this age old question of whether a fetus is equal to a person is none other than the bible.
There is no direct evidence that God would consider abortion a sin, however there is indirect evidence that he would not consider a fetus equal to an actual human being.
Exodus 21:22
"When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine."

In this instance a woman has been so injured, in a fight between two men, that she has aborted. The law states that if "no harm follows" the outsider must pay the husband a fine. An abortion has been induced through violence and this is not considered harmful. Abortion, then, is not a capital offense or a violation of the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
Consider the following passage as well, which seems to imply an intentional abortion.

Numbers 5:11-21
If a man suspects that his wife has had intercourse with another man - and possibly has become pregnant - he shall take her to the tabernacle, where the priest will mix holy water with the dust off the floor - where animals are slaughtered for sacrifice - and force the woman to drink it. If she is guilty, her womb will discharge and her uterus will drop. In other words, she will have an Abortion.

Thus, it seems possible that God may actually tend to follow the widely held scientific belief that a fetus can’t possibly be considered the equal of an actual human being.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


My point was that any relavent point you might have is drowned out by using that awful cliche.

And I wasn't involved in that argument, anyway.

Jeez, I'm awefully sorry Boris. I wish you would teach this here backwards barbarian all about modern society. I'll never mention infanticide in the Roman Empire again. I promise.

[Seeker]

"By having an abortion, you are ending a life that will begin shortly"

Ending something BEFORE its begun...that sounds impossible.

If you were 'ending' a human life in progress that's murder.
If you stop a biological process before it becomes human, that's legal abortion.

Why don't you go picket hospitals where patients are given DNR orders?

They are more human than an unthinking blob of cells.

Philosophical reasoning is not some abstract, airy-fairy thing nationalist. It is the underpinning of the social and political reality of our world. It is the difference between a good justification and a poor one.

Philosophy seems useless until it bites you in ass in the real world.

Then you realize it is the struggle to define and defend our rights and values (partially), and there is no more important struggle.

American Revolution, Sexual Revolution of the 70s, Civil Rights in the 60s, etc.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by loinburger


If your answer is "the third trimester fetus that will never be has been victimized," then every time you abstain from intercourse you are committing a crime against a potential third trimester fetus.

This is where I'd have to disagree with you, loinburger. When I don't have intercouse, I'm not disrupting something that would naturally result; there is nothing to disrupt. When I abort a second trimester fetus, I am disrupting a result that will almost certainly happen. My actions changed something that would have happened. If I don't have sex, my actions change nothing. The women is still not pregnant.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by nationalist
Jeez, I'm awefully sorry Boris. I wish you would teach this here backwards barbarian all about modern society.

Read a book.

I'll never mention infanticide in the Roman Empire again. I promise.

I certainly hope not. Next.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by Seeker


Philosophical reasoning is not some abstract, airy-fairy thing nationalist. It is the underpinning of the social and political reality of our world. It is the difference between a good justification and a poor one.

Philosophy seems useless until it bites you in ass in the real world.

The problem with philosophy is that it works both ways. One man's fine line philosophical reasoning is unnacceptable to another man, because they don't agree on fundamentals. I agree that philosophy is an integral part of modern life. The question is which line of philisophical thinking is reality. That is why practicality is just as important as philosophy.