Abortion

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by Odin

So Sperm and Egg arn't alive? Gametes, technically, are unique individuals because of the chromosomal mixing during meiosis.

Sperm and egg are living cells but are not living humans. If left alone to develop naturaly they will become nothing other than what they are. At the point of conception the human life is formed. It has its own unique DNA and if left alone to develop naturally, it will become a fully developed human being.

If you think I am crazy, there are many algae (like the sea lettuce seaweed on rocky seashores) and protozoans where the diploid and haploid stages look identical.

I thought we were discussing human abortion not algae.

The "life begins at conception" meme only makes sense if you believe in a soul, and so has no place in the SECULAR disscussion on the legality of abortion because of the seperation of church and state. If you think Abortion is wrong for religious reasons, then DON'T GET ONE.

Not surprising that someone as sure of your opinion as you are would either a) not read my entire post or b) choose to ignore it because it doesn't fit with your premade argument. The first thing I said was that I wasn't religous. Therefore, I could not possibly be against abortion for religious reasons.

My reasons are 100% secular. I believe as a matter of law (not faith) that all human life should be protected. You feel born human life should be able to indiscriminately take unborn human life.

I guess we'll have to disagree on this one. But please don't mischaracterize my arguments because I disagree with yours.

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
MY quick definition:

Murder: To take a human life without its permission or just cause (i.e. self-defense)

Oops wrong word defined.

Quick one for person

Person: Any living human.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yes, I believe that. In fact, there's no evidence to support the notion that women use abortion as an alternative to contraception. None. It's a conservative myth on par with the Welfare Mom with a Cadillac. And your God-given common sense should tell you that anyone who was actually thinking it through -- that is, making a rational choice, as your question implies -- would choose anything -- condoms, the pill, an IUD -- over and expensive, painful surgical procedure.

You assume people are rational, but the presence of repeat abortions seem contrary to that. You would think that with all the other options available, people would choose to use them, but then how do you account for the folks who do have unprotected sex and then have the abortion later? It isn't a myth perpetuated by conservatives, there are plenty of clinic workers who have great difficulty with repeat abortions.

But now we get to it -- what's the plan? "Have folks take care of their kids" is not the plan; these are folks who don't want kids, and so by definition don't want to take care of them.

So if they don't want the kids, they shouldn't be having sex. Simple to me. They need to take responsibility for their own actions if they also believe they are adult enough to enjoy the privileges. Sure, they might not want to take care of kids, but that's the way responsibility works, you do what you should do, not what you would want to do.

Now, they might be okay anyway in a society that had an intact social safety net, but the US today is not that society. In fact, as others here have already pointed out, the very forces that are pushing to outlaw abortion are the same forces who are pushing to cut taxes, gut social programs, and generally get the government out of people's lives. (They're also the same forces fighting gay adoption, which would be another partial solution here).

If folks took responsibility for the children they create, then we wouldn't be relying upon the state to pick up the slack. Yes I know there will be folks who fall through the cracks, who for whatever reason are unable to take care of their children. These are the folks we should be helping and not the folks who find having a baby interrupts their choice of careers and lifestyles.

What can we do to help these folks in particular? We need to make it easy to adopt these children. One thing that used to happen is that the nunneries took in babies that their mothers could not take care of for whatever reason. They didn't have to identify themselves to the nuns, they could simply leave the child with them. Sadly this isn't a practical solution today, but what we can do is cut through much of the red tape to help these ladies find good folks to take care of their kids.

Gay adoption as a partial solution? Only if you believe having a father is unnecessary to the proper growth and development of a child. I think we can do better for these kids, then gay adoption could give them.

And, despite your optimism, no realistic chance under those circumstances that these kids will contribute more to society than they will cost it, as children or adults (especially in an America that has begun to think of prison as the solution to pretty much any social problem).

I challenge that assertion. Your pessimism is unwarranted about these kids, plenty of folks manage to pick their asses off the ground to make something of themselves. I think the Western world cannot afford abortion as the solution to their problems, and that the longer they permit abortion, the sooner we are going to fade off the world stage. We are literally discarding everything one million people could produce every single year since 1972. These are the folks who would otherwise be our husbands or wives, but sadly are dead and not even buried.

Whatever our plan and our solution is to raise these kids, must be better then throwing these kids in the trash.

[Ben Kenobi]

What if the child wishes to be dead? I can't tell you how many times I've overheard the argument, "I wish I'd never been born! I wish you weren't my mother!" ...and the like.

And you seriously believe that the child truly wishes he were dead?

What we do for children, or anyone who is depressed and wishes he were dead, is that we help them. We don't take those wishes as invitation to kill them.

[Ben Kenobi]

Sava:

Yeah I know, nothing personal. You bring up good points that need to be addressed.

I'm sorry. Did you present any such statistics to support your argument? I don't see any.

Statistics regarding condom failure in the real world? Give me a little bit of time, and I can find some. One though that I would cite as evidence is the success of condoms in curtailing the spread of aids in Africa, the countries that have the most have the highest incidence rate.

Have you witnessed a DILATION AND EXTRACTION procedure? Again, "partial birth abortion" is not a medical term. Stop using it. There is no such thing is a "partial birth abortion".

Dilation and Extraction is a euphemism designed to convey certain principles. Partial birth abortion is a much more accurate term. As for where do I derive my information about a partial birth abortion, look at the citations submitted into congress. They will say the same things I do here regarding a partial birth abortion.

I've never witnessed this procedure and I sure as HELL know you have not.

Then why do you have authority regarding this issue, and I do not? Ask yourself this sava, if experience is the only source of knowledge, then you have nothing to defend your own position.

But I have not witnessed such a procedure, nor am I familiar with the details.

Then you need to read up on some of the literature Sava. Get yourself informed on the issue before going off and declaring that this is the way a partial birth abortion works.

But I know religious fundamentalists use these scare tactics and often use gross pictures to demonize this often LIFE SAVING MEDICAL PROCEDURE in order to push their sick and twisted agenda.

The sad thing is that the photos are true. Sure, you may disagree with them as 'scare tactics' but if someone shows pictures of a battle in Vietnam, do you care that they are trying to scare you, or whether what they show is true?

AFAIK, 99.999999% of women don't want to have a rapist's baby

Here's a project for you. Do a poll. It doesn't have to be a scientific one. Go to a mall. Poll young women. Ask them if they were to get raped, if they would want to have the rapist's baby.

Ask them if they would want to live if they were handicapped. Folks make different decisions when they are actually in this position, then when this is something entirely foreign to them.

Secondly, you also neglect those folks who agree with me that abortion kills a person. Surely, those are greater then the percentage you cite.

okay... who is that guy and why should I care?

http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/

Only one of the foremost bioethicists of the age sava. You should like him.

What are you babbling on about here? Sorry, this is a red herring. I don't know what you are talking about here. I'm not going to respond to this. I'm going to stick to the topic.

Sava, will a woman die if she does not get an abortion?

It is a tool... it is not 100% but it is one of many tools people can use to protect themselves. Education works. Ignorance doesn't. That's why abstinence only education FAILS.

So abstinence only education falls outside of the category of education? Look sava, why do you believe that abstinence only education does not work, and that the other sexual education programs do work? Clearly if you believe that all education is good, teaching people how to wait until they get married falls outside the category of ignorance. It isn't that folks are ignorant of the risks and want to wait, but that they feel they are more realistic of the risks to their own health and welfare, and feel that it is in their best interest.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Sava, will a woman die if she does not get an abortion?

Woman still die in child birth... And I would be willing to bet that there are more deaths of a mother in child birth, than occur to a woman having an abortion

[Deity Dude]

Actually Ming you are incorrect:

women who had abortions were almost twice as likely to die in the following two years. They also discovered that the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over at least eight years. Over the eight year period studied, women who aborted had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide, an 82 percent higher risk of death from accidents, and a 44 percent higher risk of death from natural causes

Here's the site if you want the whole story

http://www.afterabortion.info/news/deaths_smj.html

The maternal mortality rate in Industralized countries is less than 12 per 100,000. No specific rate can be given for abortion because a death due to an abortion is classified by the cause of death (i.e. infection, bleeding to death, etc.)

[Sava]

Partial birth abortion is a much more accurate term.

No. It is not a medical term. It is a buzz word made up by religious fundamentalists.

Then why do you have authority regarding this issue, and I do not? Ask yourself this sava, if experience is the only source of knowledge, then you have nothing to defend your own position.

I was not the one trying to graphically describe the details of the medical procedure to further my argument.

Secondly, you also neglect those folks who agree with me that abortion kills a person.

Because you are wrong.

Show me some evidence to support your claims. Evidence from a REPUTABLE, mainstream source.

Look sava, why do you believe that abstinence only education does not work

Because studies I have read prove it does not... and as I have shown with the statistics I posted, sex education DOES work


BK, you have provided no statistics to support your arguments. No evidence. You have no experience. It's clear you aren't very well informed on this subject.

Most of what you have done in this thread is engage in red herrings, strawmen, and you have attempted to demonize dilation and extraction procedures by graphically describing them even though you have never witnessed an actual procedure before.

So unless you present something resembling a logical, coherent argument, I'm afraid I'm going to declare victory.

pwned

[Ming]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
Actually Ming you are incorrect:

women who had abortions were almost twice as likely to die in the following two years. They also discovered that the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over at least eight years. Over the eight year period studied, women who aborted had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide, an 82 percent higher risk of death from accidents, and a 44 percent higher risk of death from natural causes

So now they are blaming deaths from accidents and natural causes on abortion...

You are welcome to believe such studies... I will stick to actual facts. Death from child birth is higher than death by abortion. You can ignore the numbers or call any study done twisted and non scientific as your site does... but come on... abortion increases the chance of accidental death... HAHAHAHHAHAHA

[Jaguar]

Ming posts long strings of LOL smileys in a row!

[Whaleboy]

I'm glad you at least admit your distinction is arbitrary. I'm not sure why you consider a less developed human a non-person and a more developed one a person. Or why at 7 weeks its not a person but at 11 weeks it is

You're taking the quality of being human as emergent, whereas I'm saying that a pile of cells at the moment of abortion is not human, ergo is not murder. It's rather like accusing a guy of murder for losing sperm every time he finds himself on a long, lonely night with nothing but an old Madonna video, and a box of tissues.

The reason why I consider "a collection of embrionic cells" a person is because that is what it is. That is what its intended outcome is. It isn't like there's a 20% chance it might become a fingernail. Assuming it continues normally it will one day be an adult male or female.

That it is so is a consequence of biochemistry, there is, to my mind, no mystical or essential human "force" at work here that somehow grants what *is* at this given stage a few cells, the same rights as a human. I fail to see how that works, since you mention intent... well the only intent to my mind would be that of the progenitors; that a baby is the intended consequence. In which case the whole argument is academic because it stands to reason that the woman would not be seeking an abortion.

Is it true that contraception reduces the number of abortions performed? If that were so, and given the array of options available, surely we should expect to see the rate go down.

Since we have no figures, that I know of, for abortions performed before the widespread use of contraception, I struggle to see how you can draw a hypothetical comparison, let alone present it as some kind of fact.

Again, would you agree with banning all abortions, that do not involve rape? If not, why then should it matter whether the woman has been raped or not? You aren't helping someone who has been raped by giving them an abortion, you don't "unrape" the woman.

By saying that, you're automatically saying that quality of life without an abortion is better in all cases than quality of life with an abortion. It's a spurious claim to make under the best of circumstances, let alone where such a heinous crime has been committed. Frankly you betray your own inexperience with dealing with actual living people with feelings in this situation; it's quite pathetic imo and you would do your own argument justice by withdrawing that statement.

When do you consider a brain to be fully 'developed?' How does one tell a developed brain from an undeveloped one?

One needn't, as I said earlier. An arbitrary limit, whereby you know that at, or before this limit, you are guaranteed that the foetus is not a conscious person, and after that limit, it is unlikely, but you cannot guarantee that the lifeform is not a conscious person. It's a matter of risk assessment; the real question is "how do we define a fingernail from the human?", this method is the solution rather than trying to find silly little fantasies like "human intent" in a biochemical process.

If the choice is solely the woman's why should we permit parents and boyfriends to push their daughter and girlfriend into having an abortion? Wouldn't that be just as wrong?

Why should we permit parents and boyfriends to push their daughter and girlfriend into not having an abortion?

None of us live in a vacuum; the merits and demerits of the influence upon us of families and friends is outside of the remits of this debate, outside of the legistlative power of the state, and irrelevant to the philosophy behind both.

You ever see the effects of an abortion on the unborn child?

You ever see the effect of scratching my hand upon my epidermis?

I'm going in a bit of a roundabout way. I am looking for someone to realise that it never is just the woman's choice because there are always two people involved.

The fact that two people are involved, the woman and her child is why it should not be one person's decision to kill another person.

You're certainly going in a roundabout way, I could calculate Pi from your circular logic! . You need to establish first that the foetus is a person subject to a definition of murder. Then you would then also need to apply to this foetus. In all my debates with you on this topic, I have never seen you attempt to do this. You must establish this before you can claim that one person is deciding to kill another in this case, and even then you're opening a whole new can of worms about impedence and the right to life against intent etc etc.

[ajbera]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
You're taking the quality of being human as emergent, whereas I'm saying that a pile of cells at the moment of abortion is not human, ergo is not murder. It's rather like accusing a guy of murder for losing sperm every time he finds himself on a long, lonely night with nothing but an old Madonna video, and a box of tissues.

Please, please, please stop using this inane argument. A sperm will never become a human on its own, nor will an egg. You can spill your seed all over the place, and it ain't killing a human. Sperm alone will never develop into something more than what it is. Sperm alone will never grow, breath, think, or masturbate. It's an idiotic, ignorant attempt at an argument with no basis in fact. C'mon Whaleboy, you're better than that.

BTW, this has nothing to do with your other arguments, or your stance on the issue. It's just that this particular "argument", which I hear countless times, is just unbelieveably f*cking stupid.

[Odin]

Originally posted by ajbera


Please, please, please stop using this inane argument. A sperm will never become a human on its own, nor will an egg. You can spill your seed all over the place, and it ain't killing a human. Sperm alone will never develop into something more than what it is. Sperm alone will never grow, breath, think, or masturbate. It's an idiotic, ignorant attempt at an argument with no basis in fact. C'mon Whaleboy, you're better than that.

BTW, this has nothing to do with your other arguments, or your stance on the issue. It's just that this particular "argument", which I hear countless times, is just unbelieveably f*cking stupid.

No, it's not stupid. Sperm and egg are just as human as an early embryo, haploidy vs. diplody is irrelevent. Which is why the life begins at conception meme is stupid. A gamete is just as much a unique human individual as an embyo. People try to make this distinction that a fertilized egg has the potential to become a baby, well gametes also have the potential to become a fertilized egg, which then has the potential of becomeing a baby, which is what Whaleboy and I have been trying to point out. Potential is meaningless in this discussion.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi

Gay adoption as a partial solution? Only if you believe having a father is unnecessary to the proper growth and development of a child. I think we can do better for these kids, then gay adoption could give them.

Yeah, imagine having the choice of staying unloved and unwanted in an orphanage or children's home, or having two people who love you adopt you and bring you up. I'm sure most children would really prefer the former.


You also might want to check out your god's record as an abortionist:

Miscarriage occurs in about 15-20% of all recognized pregnancies, and usually occurs before the 13th week of pregnancy. Of those miscarriages before the eighth week, 30% have no fetus associated with the sac or placenta. This condition is called blighted ovum and many women are surprised to learn that there was never an embryo inside the sac.

Some miscarriages occur before women recognize that they are pregnant. About 15% of fertilized eggs are lost before the egg even has a chance to implant (embed itself) in the wall of the uterus. A woman would not generally identify this type of miscarriage. Another 15% of conceptions are lost before 8 weeks gestation. Once fetal heart function is detected in a given pregnancy, the chance of miscarriage is less than 5%.

A woman who may be showing the signs of a possible miscarriage (such as vaginal bleeding) may hear the term "threatened abortion" used to describe her situation.

http://www.medicinenet.com/miscarriage/article.htm

[ajbera]

Odin, saying an embryo is the same as a single sperm or single ovum is like saying a ticking time bomb is the same as the lump of C4 explosive or the timing/detonation mechanism. You don't have to be concerned with a lone detonator. You don't have to be concerned with a lump of C4 without that detonator. You had better be concerned with a ticking time bomb, because it will become something (a big explosion) that the detonator or C4 will not become on their own.