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

[loinburger]

Originally posted by monkspider
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.

The Bible may be a fine source for metaphysical knowledge, but I'd question its relevance as a source for ethical knowledge (especially the Old Testament). Stoning is not an acceptable punishment for adultery, and ethnic cleansing is not an acceptable means to wage war. Don't forget that the ancient Hebrews probably had no means of determining whether a fetus had any brain activity.

[Lung]

Originally posted by Lincoln
No, calling a pro life person "anti-choice" is inflamatory because we would like the unborn to have a choice while the anti-life people would deny that choice because they cannot hear the voice of the one they are going to kill.

If you are for the unborn having the right to choice, then in order to avoid hipocrisy, you must also be for the born to have a right for choice, which must make suicide okay.

I'll bet you aren't

And as for the critics, they are of course right. Why? Because if the real agenda was for pre-natal health care, then they would give it to the mothers-to-be. To give it to the unborn is a blatant thin-edge-of-the-wedge. Next Bush will be giving fetuses social security numbers, miscarriaged fetuses death certificates and funerals, and make parents-to-be give names to fetuses even before their sex is known, not to mention eradicating birthdays in lieu of "conception days"!

[chequita guevara]

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

Yep. As a politically active person, I was familiar not only with most of the groups on the left, but also most of the groups on the right. If FFL were a new group, then I could see having never heard of it. But as it claims to have been around since 1972, I would have encountered some mention of it in the ten years I was politically active.

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

You can disagree with me, but you'll need to find a prominent anti-choice leader who isn't also opposed to women's rights. I do know that there are anti-choice feminists, but they are really few and far between when compared to the movement as a whole.

Susan B. Anthony also felt Ida B Wells should stop being a prominent part of the suffrage movement when she got married and had children. Despite being in favor of a woman's right to vote, she had rather Victorian ideas on the role of wives and mothers (ironically enough). Many prominent leaders of the suffrage movement were also racists. Infact, the argument they used (just like Margaet Sanger in fight for constraception) is that it would be useful for helping to dillute the Black vote. Just because someone's a hero doesn't mean you need to agree with everything they thought or did.

[monkspider]

Fair point Loin, however for most people the question of abortion is soley a question of morality. All scientific and philosophical arguements be damned. The reason there are so many pro-lifers is because they think abortion is something that is morally apprehenisble. Assuming these people are using the Bible as their source for morality, they will find nothing to support their arguement that abortion is a "sin", and actually a few passages that show it's almost certainly not.

[CyberGnu]

loin, a zygote is human, but not a human. Cancer cells are also human, but not a human.

Seriously, I think the abortion debate in the US has suffered greatly because of this tiny semantic difference.

Furthermore, the distinction that the DNA is different is not valid. A clone would be just as human, but the genetic material is identical. (well, a female clone with an egg from the same female would be, but let's not get into that)



Nationalist, it is not a question of rationalization. As I said, it is a question of propabilites. If we start assigning status depending on propability, we are on a slippery slope indeed. 'Will surely be a human' is not the same as 'will be a human'.

Science is the only good basis we have.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Yep. As a politically active person, I was familiar not only with most of the groups on the left, but also most of the groups on the right. If FFL were a new group, then I could see having never heard of it. But as it claims to have been around since 1972, I would have encountered some mention of it in the ten years I was politically active.

Interesting. Have you heard of these groups before? FFL claims to be part of these groups: National Women's Coalition for Life, the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, and the Seamless Garment Network. FFL seems to have a fairly large prescence at least on college campuses that I have been on. My school has FFL rallies and things like that, and I don't go to a religious school.

Just because someone's a hero doesn't mean you need to agree with everything they thought or did.

I agree with you here cough... Thomas Jefferson... cough

[nationalist]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
'Will surely be a human' is not the same as 'will be a human'.

Gnu,
I'm not quite clear as to what you mean here.

[chequita guevara]

I've heard of the other groups. . . . wait a minute, you know, I just might have run across them at the National March on Washington for Reproductive Rights back in Nov, 1989. I vaguely remember some pro-life feminists . . . Nope, I'm thinking of the pro-choice Republican women. They were nice. Too many drugs in my misspent youth.

[CyberGnu]

Edit: made a mistake by thinking I made a mistake

If something doesn't have a 100% propability, one cannot equate them.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by nationalist
When I don't have intercouse, I'm not disrupting something that would naturally result; there is nothing to disrupt.

Define "naturally." In particular, explain why it is unnatural to abort an embryo/fetus but still natural to use contraception.

When I abort a second trimester fetus, I am disrupting a result that will almost certainly happen.

When you fail to engage in sexual intercourse, then you are disrupting the exact same result. It's not as certain to occur, granted, but it's the same result nevertheless.

My actions changed something that would have happened. If I don't have sex, my actions change nothing. The women is still not pregnant.

As a result of your not having sex, a human being has failed to come into existence. As a result of a second trimester abortion, a human being has failed to come into existence. All you're doing is drawing a line in the sand in terms of probabilities, and declaring that everything on one side of the line (everything with, say, a 15% probability of producing a human) cannot be interrupted, while everything on your side of the line is a-okay.

In a second trimester abortion, who is the victim?

[CyberGnu]

Ten minutes before I got my PhD diploma, I was perfectly sure Igoing to be a PhD. Yet, even though I was very sure, I couldn't at that point call myself a PhD. Follow me?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by monkspider
Fair point Loin, however for most people the question of abortion is soley a question of morality. All scientific and philosophical arguements be damned.

Morality (ethics) is philosophy. The philosophy that "all of my morals can be gleaned from the pages of the Bible" is flawed, since the OT has several laws/practices that are clearly immoral, while the NT is somewhat vague ("love your neighbor as yourself" is a laudable moral system, but requires a moderate amount of independent thinking in order to be put into practice).

[nationalist]

Originally posted by monkspider
Assuming these people are using the Bible as their source for morality, they will find nothing to support their arguement that abortion is a "sin"

I'm not using the Bible for the basis of my beliefs on this topic at all. I just can't split the hairs required to think that it is o.k. to destroy something that doesn't have brainwaves at the moment, but will have them in a week and will then be a sentient person. I think that you have to think on the long term rather than the short term, and 6 months is too short term to think on. To me it seems like these people are ignoring the longterm consequences of their actions. That is why I dismiss most of their arguments as rationalization. When I make decisions, I tend to think about what will happen with each choice at least a year from the day that I make that choice. With abortion it seems clear to me. If I have an abortion, there will be certainly be no child. If I don't have an abortion there certainly will be a child. It seems like choosing abortion is choosing to kill that child, because if I didn't have that abortion, outside accidents disregarded, the child would be alive. I couldn't make the decision to kill that child.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Ten minutes before I got my PhD diploma, I was perfectly sure Igoing to be a PhD. Yet, even though I was very sure, I couldn't at that point call myself a PhD. Follow me?

Yeah, I follow you. I just don't agree with the instantaneous method of logic. You wouldn't call yourself PhD, but you would say that you were certainly going to be one unless somebody shot you. I think that you have to look at the consequences and results of a certain span of time. Do you see what I am saying?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
loin, a zygote is human, but not a human. Cancer cells are also human, but not a human.

The zygote is the beginning of the life cycle of a new human. Cancer is self-destructive and, no matter how mutated it becomes (no matter how much it diverges from the host's DNA), cannot be considered a new life form (since it cannot possibly mature and reproduce).

The life cycle of any organism starts out with a single cell. Mammals aren't an exception. You wouldn't say that a chicken zygote inside of a layed egg is just an organ (or cluster of tissues or whatever) of the chicken who layed the egg, nor would you say that the zygote is somehow not a chicken. The same holds true for human zygotes, the difference of course being that chicken zygotes mature completely outside of their mother's body, while human zygotes mature inside of their mother's body.