Fair is fair . . . Georgia Democrats propose an anti-vasectomy bill

[regexcellent]

We say that a baby is a person when he (I'm using "he" instead of "it" to represent personhood) is outside of the womb. However viability at this point goes back ridiculously far. As PLATO said, there's no real physiological difference in the fetus inside versus outside. So either it's okay to kill some babies once they've been born, or it's not okay to abort the fetus beforehand if it's after viability.

[PLATO]

Viability still doesn't answer the question of personhood though. As you indicate, viability is an increasing fuction of science. What would we do if we could sustain a fetus from the day after conception outside the womb? Would it then be a "person"? I don't think so, but then that is only an opinion.

Just as gribbler says, there are those that believe that just because it is alive and has human DNA some people believe that it is a person. However, just because we can sustain life in living tissue does not make it a person to me. If some of my skin cells were sustained seperate from my body and nurtured to grow and reproduce, I certainly don't think that would be a person even though it contains human DNA.

Both of your posts bring back the central falacy...we just don't know what makes living cells a person. Until then, it is a debatable point.......and rightly so.

[regexcellent]

I agree completely.

[Jon Miller]

Right now in the US you can kill a baby just because it isn't able to say 'no' yet.

This is obviously wrong. And not consistent with where we judge humans to be alive in other senses.

PLATO and regexcellent, you guys do not understand. According to your reasoning, it is fine to kill babies even after birth (which I think Che defended).

We currently kill babies long after brain functions exist.

One of the main issues is that it is in a lot of peoples interest to not admit that babies are a person, since it would inconvenience them.

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

I think it was Loinburger who refuted the notion that skin cells and/or sperm are as much a person as an embryo.

edit: (wanted to add something here)
Also, I disagree with the idea that science can somehow tell us when a fetus becomes a person. This is an arbitrary definition that we as a society have to agree upon somewhere. I don't see a difference between abortion and the old eskimo practice of killing sick infants. It's all just an act of expedience.

[Hauldren Collider]

By the way, it might not be necessary but I'd like to call additional attention to the incredible wrongness streak Oerdin has had in this thread, about the contents of the bill, whether it has even passed the legislature, whether the governor intended to sign, and then his whole conspiracy theory about Republicans wanting nothing more than to own women's bodies. He's really outdone himself.

[kentonio]

This is openly false, as I explained above. They are (rather, were planning on) mandating an ultrasound. Not a transvaginal ultrasound. However at early stages of pregnancy, ultrasounds must be transvaginal to see anything. Christ.

Yet again you manage to be wrong. They were not mandating an ultrasound they were mandating a transvaginal ultrasound, and not because it was necessary but because they wanted to use it to put off women from having abortions.

WASHINGTON -- The Virginia House of Delegates passed on Wednesday a revised version of a GOP-sponsored informed consent bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound at least 24 hours before having an abortion. The new bill, which requires women to receive an external, transabdominal ultrasound rather than a more invasive transvaginal ultrasound, passed by a vote of 65-32.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) revoked his support for the original bill just minutes before the House began debate on it, saying that the government did not have the power to require the transvaginal procedure.

"Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state," McDonnell said in a statement. "No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure."

"For this reason ... I am requesting that the General Assembly amend this bill to explicitly state that no woman in Virginia will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily. I am asking the General Assembly to state in this legislation that only a transabdominal, or external, ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age. Should a doctor determine that another form of ultrasound may be necessary to provide the necessary images and information that will be an issue for the doctor and the patient. The government will have no role in that medical decision," he said.

Congratulations on being wrong in the 123,232,321th thread in a row.

[kentonio]

PLATO and regexcellent, you guys do not understand. According to your reasoning, it is fine to kill babies even after birth (which I think Che defended).

Well done, you just attacked the guy who has been most stridently pro-life in this thread. Good work.

One of the main issues is that it is in a lot of peoples interest to not admit that babies are a person, since it would inconvenience them.

Here's a thought, you are ignorant. Regexcellent is ignorant. HC is obviously ignorant, but we can take that as read. Funnily enough I am also ignorant. Why? Because none of us have the physical capability to bear a child or experience the hormonal changes that pregnancy causes. It's so ****ing easy for us to sit back talking about what women should or shouldn't do with their bodies, while never having to face the consequences of those decisions.

For a woman to have an abortion is an incredibly traumatic experience. It isn't something they do on their lunch hour because they couldn't be arsed to pick up some condoms. It can lead to years of depression, self guilt and hurt. Women understand this, but also understand that sometimes terminating a pregnancy is something that is the correct thing to do for them. If you bother to look back to the time before abortion was legal, you'll find millions of women voluntarily facing illegal abortions that often led to death, permanent injury or sometimes rape. If women want to outlaw abortion then that's their call, but for a bunch of men to sit around preaching morality about something they can never experience is frankly disgusting.

I just noticed that this bill was sponsored by a woman. I guess if this is a war on women, it's a civil war then, eh? Christ people need to tone it down

Women are not a single bloc with simplistic, shared ideas. They all however have the right to a say in the matter. The idea that the poor dears don't all share a single idea however is a beautiful example of archaic republican thinking.

[Jon Miller]

I don't understand how it is to be a German.

It is really easy to tell them what they should do with their nation. That they shouldn't have gassed millions of Jews, homosexuals and others. But I don't understand what it is to be German.

**** saying that women have a right to murder just because they are pregnant, go through hormonal changes and so on.

They have just as much right to kill the living human being, as they do to kill their husband or mother-in-law, or someone passing by on the street.

JM

[kentonio]

I don't understand how it is to be a German.

It is really easy to tell them what they should do with their nation. That they shouldn't have gassed millions of Jews, homosexuals and others. But I don't understand what it is to be German.

Do you also believe that people suffering from horrifically painful terminal diseases should have to suffer through months of agony because euthanasia is also murder? I assume you are also pacifist in every single situation, regardless of genocide, mass rape and torture, medical experimentation etc?

**** saying that women have a right to murder just because they are pregnant, go through hormonal changes and so on.

They have just as much right to kill the living human being, as they do to kill their husband or mother-in-law, or someone passing by on the street.

Except that it isn't a human being, its a ball of cells that in the natural course of events is rejected by the body in something like 50% of cases anyway. When you get to the point of late stage abortion, I actually have some sympathy for pro-life views, but even then it really isn't my decision. If you remove the right to any abortion then you are telling women that once they become pregnant either by chance or rape or whatever, that they are forced to undergo 9 months of traumatic changes to their body that can sometimes lead to terrible physical damage and sometimes death.

My Ex-gf recently found out that since birth she has had a hole in her heart that had never been detected before. Any massive strain on the body could kill her instantly, and its frankly a miracle that shes still alive. If she had become pregnant and that hole had THEN been discovered are you telling me that you would sentence her to death?

[Jon Miller]

Do you also believe that people suffering from horrifically painful terminal diseases should have to suffer through months of agony because euthanasia is also murder? I assume you are also pacifist in every single situation, regardless of genocide, mass rape and torture, medical experimentation etc?

Nope, I favor euthanasia.

As the persons choice. Not being forced on them.

Abortion is not the persons choice.

I am pro-choice. Abortion is the most anti-choice action that can be made, as it removes a lifetime of choices for a person.

I am not one who thinks that a human being exists at conception. Only when brainwaves exist or a heart is beating or any of the other signs that someone is alive that we use.

I think it is extremely dishonest, evil, and criminal that people claim that a baby is not a human, while those that display even less of the signs but have spoken a word are. Even those who have displayed a lot less of the signs.

JM

[kentonio]

You didn't answer my question, would you have sentenced my ex-girlfriend to death by removing the right to abortion if she had become accidentally pregnant or had become pregnant after being raped?

You also didn't answer whether you are a pacifist under all conditions.

[Jon Miller]

I think that, just like in cases with adults, that if the life of the mother is at risk that this needs to be decided by the people involved (most importantly, the mother).

But that isn't the case for abortion now.

Why should she get to decide to kill someone because she made a mistake? It isn't like "oh, I drove drunk so since I made a mistake I get the right to choose to kill people" or "I got drunk, got in an accident, both me and another person need treatment. If the other person lives I will be responsible for their medical treatment. The other person is not able to speak. So they ask me if I want to give the other person treatment so they will live."

Actually, it is much more like the second one.

It continues to amaze me that this is even something people discuss.

I don't see how killing innocents is somehow the same as killing in defense/etc (like US during WW2) or if someone is raping my mother.

JM

[Jon Miller]

"I got drunk, got in an accident, both me and another person need treatment. If the other person lives I will be responsible for their medical treatment. The other person is not able to speak. So they ask me if I want to give the other person treatment so they will live."

In this case every selfish person will decide to kill the other person. Because that is better for them. We agree that it is unethical.

Yet we don't agree that abortion is generally unethical.

I am not saying that abortion is unethical in the situation where only one gets to live.

JM

[MrFun]

Abortion is an incredibly hard topic if you really look at it seriously. The point that everyone should be looking at is: What is governments role in abortion?

To me, government should have no role in deciding what one person does to their own body. The question that abortion raises is when does a fetus become a person? To simply say that life begins at conception is to state the obvious...from a purely biological point of view, there is no doubt that a fetus is alive. But...is it a person? To say that it is not a person until the moment of birth is equally miopic. A fetus is not fundamentally different 5 minutes before it is born. Where is the point that something changes from being a mass of living cells and becomes a person?

I don't think anyone can exactly measure that. However, that is the point that the government becomes obligated to protect the rights of that person.

This is the real debate and it is one that cannot be settled until science provides us a reliable answer. Until then, it is a matter that must be decided by each persons own thoughts or moral code. The way for people to express the responsibilities of government is through their elected representatives. The responsibility for the people is to continue to express their thoughts and feelings to and through these representatives.

This appears to be the process that we continually see being played out. It is unlikely that anything will change until the scientific answer is known. Until then, people will continue to call those that disagree with them "morons" and will continue to take extremists viewpoints to try and emphasize their way of thinking.

Democracy sometimes sucks, but it is the best deal going.

I would just like to see Republicans who are genuinely in favor of a less intrusive government.