Legal Death, Legal Life, Personhood and Abortion

Let's try this a different way, keeo in mind that I am only concetrating on one aspect of your poorly thought out essay.I am guessing that this is your definition of an umbilical cord: But webster outs it as:

quote:

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Main Entry: umbilical cord
Function: noun
1 : a cord arising from the navel that connects the fetus with the placenta; also : YOLK STALK

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Ok, so legally your definition doesn't work. Obviously nothing.
One has lungs that do not work due to a sustained injury.
The other doesn't have lungs at all.Slight difference there? They are a developing human, just like you.
A legally dead person, is no longer devoloping.Slight defference again eh? Isn't that the natural course of humans?100% of legally dead people, are......dead.mmmmmm.....another slight difference. Ah, the juice of the matter. Until we can predict that with 100% accuracy, we are going to have to make another comparison then.
That's the real issue. Um, no it's it not. Funny, then why start it out with " I know this is going to upset people"
If it's not about feelings, then leave them out.This is a casual debate, not a court of law. I can include my feelings if I want to, and I do not need you or Holmes to tell me otherwise, so can it. Yea, but let's leave our feelings out of it ok? Another entirely different issue, iwth it's own set of rules that need to apply.Further more:
A developing baby, no matter what stage it is in, is a human life. we start out the same, and end the same.
If a zygote needs an umbilical cord for its survival, then that is what makes up its life.
If you remove that zygote from its oxygen supply, then that can be compared to cuttung someone's lungs out.If we look at the word sustained in the legal death act, we know that it was an outside force that caused it, or a natural one. If it is a natural one, then it is investegated, if it is an outside force, as with all deaths, it is investegated. If someone is found guilty of causing the sustained injury, then they are legally responsible for the death.If you remove a zygote from it's womb, then you are responsible for causing the sustained injury.If your going to use the law, you need to use the whole law, not just a few words from one specific law.So just forget it, you cannot compare a developing baby, fetus, zygote, or whatever, to the legal death act.Try again.

You know what, I agree with all that.
What I don't agree with is that his explaination would make all developing humans, non-human by definition, and opens the door to abortion for whatever reason you choose.That is why this doesn't work for me.

I've been staying away from this one for a while now, but I can't resist...Nice article, RAZD, but IMO completely tangential to the question of abortion¹. As I see it the only issue in the question of abortion is the woman; is it right to force a women to use her body as an incubator against her wishes? It isn't about the fetus, it isn't about it's moral status, it's about the right of the woman to choose what happens with her body.¹Those who have frequented this site for a long time may realise this is a change of position for me. Congratulations to those who convinced me.

Listen I understand your point, but I am speaking of strickly healthy babies when I am against abortion.Unhealthy babies is another story.The problem I have with people aborting otherwise healthy baby, is that is a bad solution for another problem.Let's make a comparison. I own a HVAC Plumbing business. You call me saying that you have a leak in your baseboard heating system. Which would you prefer me to do:a: Fix the leak, so it stops, and the system works fine.
b: Cut that part of your heating system out, so it stops leaking.
c: Put some duct tape around it so it stops for awhile, but it's going to leak again.The real problem is people getting pregnant who don't want to have babies.

You mean, let's not worry about the past or the future, because it doesn't matter, and it would only interfere with what we want here and now. If we worry about the ramifications, then we just might have to be moral.Besides, my first rebuttle has nothing to do with that anyway. It's when its possible to awing at every sentence that scares me.
What are you saying, I can't disagree?
It's full of holes, and I will point them out, period.You know, you should stop telling people how to live their lives, and what to think, and stop being peoples psychologists as well, your not good at it.I mentioned in the begining of this thread, I was going to put down my Christianinty for this one, and I did. It was a bad idea. I think I do not want to debate this further, its a waste of time.

I agree, and I also feel that the first trimester is plenty of time for her to exercise her option in this regard. I don't think it is completely tangential, as this gives a rational basis for that decision: a zygote or a blastocyst does not meet the requirements for {a human life} as opposed to a {single\mass} of {living but not particularly special} cell{s}.Continuing beyond the point when you know you are pregnant is making a decision to continue. Further anyone engaging in protected sex should have all the equipment necessary for that protection on hand, whether it is night before protection or morning after protection, it should be there with the commitment to use it.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

agreed, but then ... I am a liberal heh.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

quote:

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we have also never had a pregnancy occur.

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...that you know of.You could have had some fertilized eggs never implant, or one of you could have some undetected fertility-reducing issue that, unless you have actually tried to get pregnant (which you may have, I don't know) you wouldn't know about.I'm not in any sort of disagreement with your main argument, but I just wanted to put those possibilities out there.

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It has many more implications than for abortion itself. For all those who are against abortion because they are pro-life, the truth of the above statement ought to mandate that they also be for socialized medicine. How many "dead babies" come from our incredibly backward capitalist health care system.

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A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE US AND OTHER RICH NATIONS

Whoops. You are 100% correct. I should have said we have not faced any situation of pregnancy where we might have to utilize abortion as a form of birth control.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)

That is fine. What you must do then is concentrate on the arguments he makes which are problematic in their logic or fact, and not just because you don't like the conclusion. I mean you can say "I don't like the conclusion" but that does not dispute his essay, or its merits.I will add that your post #61 is a start in the right direction.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)

No, again this is an example of a strawman. That was not my position at all. Not even close.I was talking about creating a good debate or argument against a position you disagree with. You should not keep dwelling on the conclusion of an opposing person's argument while making your counterarguments because not every plank in your opponent's argument must be dismissed in order to defeat the conclusion, and trying to bash some planks puts your own argument in a bad light.This gets even worse when you create strawman to make it look as if you are attacking a plank of his argument, when in fact you are not. You can disagree. It is fine to point out the holes. The problem is that some of the holes are manufactured by you and not part of his argument. That is what we are pointing out. I haven't told you how to live your life, I only explained how to improve your counter arguments, as well as pointing out that you should stop trying to tell others how to live their lives.If you go back and look you were the one that brought up moral arguments against porn and premarital sex. I merely countered them.I did note that it appears your moralizing comes from the same position I find most moralizer's positions come from. Again, I did not drag the pertinent facts out of you in some sort of therapy session, you provided them, I merely noted them as a consistent background.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"...don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)

Hi riVeRraT,I am just curious. Did you get a chance to read my previous post "Message 55"? It was reply to the OP so you may have missed it. I had hoped to hear your thoughts on what I wrote.I just wanted to point out based on your comment: Doesn't it also open the door to a legit set of restrictions on partial birth/late term abortions? If "personness" is defined in an objective way it does give a mandate to free early term abortions but also to restricting late term ones. It is a give a little take a little situation with the end result being that more unborn children who make it to late term will be protected. If the goal is to reduce abortions then why is this not a valid step? Is it the whole enchilada or nothing for you? If so why, especially if children end up being saved?

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By the way, for a fun second-term drinking game, chug a beer every time you hear the phrase, "...contentious but futile protest vote by democrats." By the time Jeb Bush is elected president you will be so wasted you wont even notice the war in Syria.
-- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

I'll keep in mind that you keep asserting that but have yet to show any evidence of such. Yes, pick something else totally irrelevant to the argument. Another strawman. Except that you have yet to demonstrate that claim. You didn't address any legal issue, you just quoted an irrelevant definition for your latest strawman argument. And obviously then, both fail the test for working lungs and brain. No different from any still living mass of cells within the otherwise dead body, organs that can be transplanted to save other lives (but which are not themselves a human life), but not the elements crucial to a living human being. They are cells. Cells without what they need to be functioning human beings. Another bald assertion devoid of supporting evidence. Because it is about how to address an emotional issue logically and with a consistent basis. Knowing it will upset {you\others} because of your emotional views doesn't make it any less valid, but it is fair to give warning. It's not a baby until it is born. Stop misrepresenting the issue. One can also argue that we all end up dead. Obviously you don't know what a zygote is (no umbilical there). People do have operations where a lung or other organs are removed. More appeal to emotionalism rather than to logic. Abortion is legal, it is not breaking the law. With or without this definition.And with or without this definition I can compare a zygote and a blastocyst and an embryo to a living organ within a human body and see that while it has the elements of living cells it does not have the elements critical to a human life as agreed on by all the people that worked on the definition of legal death.And the fact that 2/3rds of zygotes never make it to week 12 naturally means that you cannot rationally consider them to be human, that this would be just as arbitrarily erroneous as stating that you aren't human until you are 10.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

pretty damning stats schraf: the US tops the lists (for the "rich nations" included in the study)with nearly twice the deaths than those socialist countries like sweden ...and of course it's because they have all that extra tax money to spend: Then there is the issue of how much is spent on health care not covered by taxes and add those to the tax figures to see what the difference is.do you have similar stats for less developed countries?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}