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

[Kidlicious]

I don't think anyone here thought you personally believed such things but many anti-choice people are very far right and do.

What do you mean? Do I believe that people don't commit crimes because they don't get welfare? I don't have any problem with abortion being illegal and I don't believe that people commit crimes because they don't get welfare. But no, I'm not a political conservative, nor I'm I really conservative religiously, but people call me that.

[notyoueither]

Well, yes, because said people have no brain activity due to their brains dying. The condition, in that case, is permanent. They're never going to do anything but sit, drool and stare. In most pregnancies, this is not the case, and I have no objection to abortions in the rare cases where it is.

The issue is the morality of the termination of the entity at a certain point in its life-cycle.

The fact that the rapidly developing embryo may not yet meet requirements to be regarded as deserving of special protection is relevant, no matter how much you do not want it to be.

The simple fact is that it is legally and morally proper to terminate a human life under certain circumstances. Brain death is just one of them. The lack of a brain could be another.

My problem is that you're looking at the stage they're presently at in isolation, speculating on thoughts and feelings they might be having, and proposing that you should make those speculations the basis of law. Never mind the larger process, only their present state counts. Which is kinda like making it legal to waste somebody, provided s/he is asleep and therefore not totally conscious.

It is legal, and moral to 'waste' someone under certain circumstances. Police stopping some criminals in some circumstances, citizens defending selves and others under certain circumstances, militaries in time of war or civil insurrection, etc.

The circumstances of terminating a human life do matter in making it a moral or immoral and a legal or illegal act.

The complete lack of a brain of any sort, let alone activity in that brain does completely remove the possibility of thoughts and feelings, does it not?

You won't find any other than fertilization, which turns it from two distinct cells from two different people into a unified individual with its own identity. There's no bright line between one stage of pregnancy and another any more than there's a bright line between "baby" and "toddler." Yes, you can say what a baby is and what a toddler is, but you can't pinpoint one exact moment where it ceases to be the one and becomes the other, because growth is a continuous, gradual process in and out of the womb. The icky slimy little thing that looks like a bacterium isn't swapped out for the eight-months variant that looks like a wizened, but still vaguely cute, Roswell alien. They're the same critter.

I disagree that there is no bright line. Brain or no brain seems to be one certainly. Your refusal to consider that there may be one or more does not mean none exist.

Yes, but why? Because you're projecting thoughts and feelings onto a being which is unlikely to have either (at least, in any meaningful way--it will eventually acquire "feelings" in the sense that it will thrash around while the doctor is killing it)? How is this whole thought process grounded in anything but projections and sentiment?

No, I'm supposing that something with no brain cannot have thoughts or feelings, by definition. Once there is a brain, and it begins to function, we can observe reactions to external stimulus like sound. These are things used to gauge status of legal and ethical protection for entities of that species in other circumstances. These are not projection. These are objective facts.

[giblets]

I am all for encouraging homosexual couples to adopt, and support social programs as the budget allows. If you want to make more room for them by scrapping some tanks and other invade-brown-people-to-teach-them-our-values gear, fine by me. I'm a moderate, not a conservative. Anyway,



By your logic, every state would say, "welp, it's illegal in the next state, why bother?" and it would be legal everywhere. I know that's what you want, but it makes no sense from our perspective.

You must have made a typo. I'm guessing you meant to write "not illegal". It's obvious that backward states like Oklahoma or Mississippi wouldn't follow my logic. They just won't accomplish a whole lot. Is it rational to expend so much effort into trying to get abortion banned when the feasible results are so underwhelming?

BTW, what counts as a "brain" for abortion purposes? Two neurons? Eight? Thirty-two? A couple of thousand? None of those will allow for anything even approaching awareness AFAIK, but provided they're inside the skull or what will later turn into it, you could call them a brain.

10364

[notyoueither]

Thank you for your condescension. Am I to take it that totally thoughtless, reflexive reactions are what make us human?

I apologise. I am trying to understand where you are coming from. I was interpreting what seems to be refusal to consider other moral viewpoints as a logical or rhetorical excercise.

But, yes. Thoughtless, reflexive reactions are used as sign posts for the legal and ethical protection of human life. Once again, they are used in determining brain death.

[notyoueither]

I can see two definite bright lines.

Brain function is one. Viability outside the womb is another. These are milestones.

I suspect you will say, 'no, they are pebbles.' I would then say that we are looking at a beach, not a rock slide.

[Elok]

We should probably just call it quits here, since I'm giving up Poly for Lent in, uh...2.5 hours. I'm sorry, but I can't conceive of how a temporary inability of a fetus/embryo/whatever to meet a certain benchmark (which it's working quite furiously to achieve) can justify killing it. If my mother had had an abortion in January of 1983 (I was born in late August), would it have been me she killed? Undeniably. There was nobody else there to kill. I wasn't switched in for that little lump of cells. I was that lump of cells, and for ten years it had been legal to kill me. What can you say to dissuade me, to convince me that it would have been somebody/something else dying in there? I don't think you can. It was me.

[giblets]

The only thing there was an unfeeling lump of cells. It would have been no different, from your perspective, from never being conceived at all.

[Guynemer]

I would ague that the fetus became you, but I know what you mean.

I hope you find something else to give up for Lent, but if not, see you on the flip.

[DaShi]

Exactly, it's one small step from banning contraceptives. However, Elok has already made it clear that he is against that as well. A shame we won't be able to read his stretch of logic to justify it.

[Elok]

The only thing there was an unfeeling lump of cells. It would have been no different, from your perspective, from never being conceived at all.

Same thing if you blew my brains out with a .45 while I was sleeping. Barring a conscious afterlife (which you don't believe in and isn't the focus of earthly law), I'd never know I'd died. I don't think that makes it right.

I would ague that the fetus became you, but I know what you mean.

I hope you find something else to give up for Lent, but if not, see you on the flip.

It's good for me to take a break, have forty days to focus on what's important and detox the accumulated snark out of my system. See you around, my man, and thanks to the rest for a fairly civil, albeit spirited, debate. Sadly, BK will return around the same time I do, and we will be having a discussion that starts this way and ends with whether or not Thomas Aquinas considered it rape when the woman was wearing makeup.

[DaShi]

Same thing if you blew my brains out with a .45 while I was sleeping. Barring a conscious afterlife (which you don't believe in and isn't the focus of earthly law), I'd never know I'd died. I don't think that makes it right.

That's because gribbler should say "It would have been no different, from anyone's perspective, from never being conceived at all."

[DaShi]

It's good for me to take a break, have forty days to focus on what's important and detox the accumulated snark out of my system. See you around, my man, and thanks to the rest for a fairly civil, albeit spirited, debate. Sadly, BK will return around the same time I do, and we will be having a discussion that starts this way and ends with whether or not Thomas Aquinas considered it rape when the woman was wearing makeup.

Glad you learned that being civil brings civil responses in return. If you ever take me off ignore, I'd be happy to have civil discussions in the future.

[notyoueither]

We should probably just call it quits here, since I'm giving up Poly for Lent in, uh...2.5 hours. I'm sorry, but I can't conceive of how a temporary inability of a fetus/embryo/whatever to meet a certain benchmark (which it's working quite furiously to achieve) can justify killing it. If my mother had had an abortion in January of 1983 (I was born in late August), would it have been me she killed? Undeniably. There was nobody else there to kill. I wasn't switched in for that little lump of cells. I was that lump of cells, and for ten years it had been legal to kill me. What can you say to dissuade me, to convince me that it would have been somebody/something else dying in there? I don't think you can. It was me.

OK. Good luck with your observance.

I suspect we will have to agree to disagree about a few things. I appreciate your efforts to be understood and I've tried to understand, for what it's worth.

We would agree about some things though. One would be that unrestricted access to abortion in any situation and at any time is not something we want to see.

[kentonio]

and I don't believe that people commit crimes because they don't get welfare.

How do you believe that people who lose their jobs and have no support can support their families when they unable to get work?

But no, I'm not a political conservative, nor I'm I really conservative religiously, but people call me that.

Your views are pretty consistently aligned with the conservatives, but you're actually quite refreshing in that your religious positions tend to be quite strictly religious based rather than twisting into political views like so many of the conservative religious right.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Your views are pretty consistently aligned with the conservatives

I think economically he's a bit more left than the conservatives.