What's wrong with this picture?

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I draw that line because that ovum that is fertilized is the ONLY ONE that will become a human being out of the others.

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1) Would you consider killing human cells (such as occurs in a surgery, when you cut yourself, etc) to be morally wrong?2) Would you consider killing a unique organism with a unique combination of DNA (a dandelion, an ant, etc) a moral wrong?If the answer to both those questions is "No", how can you combine the two to conclude that there is some sort of major moral wrong?The question is not "will become" - the question is whether what you are getting rid of *is* a full, thinking human being. If your argument is to oppose things that will prevent a child from developing, you should ban birth control; make sex mandatory; ban drinking and all medications that can increase the chance of miscarriage; etc.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Ah, my apologies. Thanks, Messenjah. ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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Over 99% of all abortions are not performed because of extreme cases where the mother's life is in jeopardy, just her lifestyle.

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Evidence? Or is this another one of those "73.6 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot" lines? Speaking as someone who was very close to someone who starved herself in order to miscarry after she was raped (because she couldn't get an abortion without her parents permission, and didn't want them to know what happened to her) at age 13, I am quite curious as to your response.

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In the near future our society will become ever more desperate to clense ourselves of what we deem our own social parasites. Our view will probably focus more on economics as my generation suffers under the burden of paying to keep the baby boomers and gen X'ers alive on Socoal Security and welfare. We might turn to Euthenizing anyone not gainfully supporting the GNP. Existing as a blood sucking leech taking up valuable medical and monitary resources will be sure prescription for termination. We could euthenize all of the elderly like a tree does it's old leaves as it prepares to enter a transitional season. All perfectly natural if you view the human race as one giant multi-faceted organism. The Logan's Run concept makes a ton of sense if you are young like me and want to keep all of my money for myself instead of paying for the retired and elderly through myriads of government social programs.

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Eugenics in this country peaked in the early 1900s (such as when Indiana actually passed a sterilization statue for the mentally ill, under Gov. Frank Hanly (whose platform included "race purity and civic righteousness")); we developed an aversion to eugenics as a response, and haven't done anything even remotely close to it since. Our fear of eugenics is quite obvious in the fear of DNA research being abused for such purposes that has played frequently on the popular imagination in recent times.

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I don't have a problem with anyone who is Pro abortion as long as when the time comes for you to be aborted, you don't hypocritically throw up the same arguement to save your own lives that the pro-lifers are using to save the unborn.

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It wouldn't have been a problem, because it wouldn't have been *me*. If you don't have a mind, it's kind of hard to think- 'to be'. Cogito ergo sum. I could make the exact same argument about killing grass. "I don't have a problem with anyone who is Pro cutting as long as when the time comes for you to be cut, you don't hypocritically throw up the same arguement to save your own lives that the pro-lawners are using to save the grass."------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I can direct you to a survey that I can vouch for: The Medical Journal of Australia, Vol. 163, no. 8, Oct. 16, 1995.* 96% of abortions were first trimester
* 3/4 of women chose more than one reason
* 60% of women cited finances
* 7% of cases were due to the health of the fetus
* 5% were due to the health of the mother
* Just over a third (38%) cited "potential for unwanted lifestyle changes"Also, your analogy to government-sponsored eugenics is preposterous: noone is forcing women to have abortions. The government leaves it as their choice (as it has been through most of recorded history; humans even harvested one plant to extinction because of its use as a "morning after pill" (silphium)).As to the morality of it, you need to establish that an embryo - which may not even have a single neuron - is of the same or even remotely close moral worth as a fully developed, thinking human being. You haven't even approached this yet. Clearly you would not consider that any human cell or group of human cells is morally equivalent to a fully developed human being. Additionally, I seriously doubt that you find destroying a unique combination of DNA - a whole unique organism - as some sort of moral wrong; people do it every day, with all sorts of species of flora and fauna. So, why do you combine the two to suddenly get a moral wrong so great that you'll impose an incredible hardship on someone else?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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BTW - is there a spell check function on this forum because I know I'm really slaughtering some of these words.

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Unfortunately, no - you'll have to butcher the english language like the rest of us ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Not to mention that as many as half of all pregnancies terminate before the woman even knows that she's pregnant. Sex should be criminal. So should fertilization clinics, which create far more embryos than they implant, so that they can pick one that will be likely to survive the process. You don't see too much rage against fertility clinics, do you? ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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Either embrace all human life as sacred or cut loose with the concept and focus on the good of society as a whole and de-emphasize the rights of individual life just like the ants and monarch butterflies.

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They key here is whether we're talking about something of equal moral value to a full term, thinking human being. 96% of abortions are first-trimester - including virtually all non-health-threatening abortions. This means that we're either talking about something with no nervous system, or a nervous system little more complicated than an insect's. Can you understand why people would have a hard time equivocating that with a fully thinking human being?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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It's more than what it is at the time it's aborted.

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Why? If someone were to drop an atomic bomb on what is now New York back in 1600 and irradiated the countryside to make it unlivable, vs. dropping an atomic bomb on New York today - killing everyone and irradiating the countryside - would they be the same thing?

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Everyone in the abortion room knows that you are ending a human life outside the natural bounds of it's survival potential.

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Actually, you'll find that everyone in the operating room will disagree. They'll agree that you're ending the life of an embryo which may have developed to the point to have as complex of a nervous system as an insect (only if late first term or later). You'll also find that essentially none of them will equate that to a thinking human being. Now the question goes back to you: Why do *you* do this?

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So if it doesn't reach a certain stage of developement it's of little importance as far as the act, it just either lessens or heightens the reality in our minds the closer the human gets to reaching a recognizable life sustaining form outside the womb.

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The further along it is, the more of a moral issue it is, because it is closer to being like a normal human the further along the pregnancy gets. Eventually, it will transition from no nervous system to insect-level to human-level. The key word being "eventually" - not currently.

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Let's say that you embarked on building a really bomb 15 meter competition sailing vessel. You went through all of the time to aquire the materials, extra man power, resources and facilities. Let's say you and your team start to assemble the ship. It goes slow at first because it's extremely critical to set the keel beam and mark the rib joints perfect so the thing will track straight in open seas. Say I come along and not only burn down the crude skeleton of your boat but I destroy the building you are working out of, forcing you to completely start over and you had just started the boat 2 weeks ago. (etc)

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Ah, so you're talking about the situation where the woman wanted to have a child. In that case, yes, it would be a tragedy if a woman who wanted to have a child had an abortion.If you're talking about a case where it's a self-building boat, unless the boat was sentient, the only tragedy of your burning would be to the owners of the boat who lost their investment - again analogous to the case of a woman who wanted to keep her baby.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Lizard Breath:A question in three parts.For the first part, I'll be succinct: What every last one of these arguments boils down to is whether a just fertilized egg - something without even a single nerve cell - is of the same moral worth or even a relatively close moral worth to that of the mother. You need to evidence why this is so - that is the only issue in dispute here, really.Part two: I'll re-present the argument that I gave before, and would like a response to:1) Do you have any problem with killing human cells? I.e., if you had your spleen removed because of a car accident, would that be some sort of moral wrong?2) Do you have any problem with killing unique combinations of DNA that don't have complex thought processes? I.e., if you crushed a dandelion or a spider, would you see that as a moral wrong?If your answer to both of these is "No", how do you combine them to reach a great moral wrong? "Humanity" doesn't lie in DNA - it lies in human minds. Something without nerve cells has no mind, let alone a functioning human mind. DNA is a blueprint, no more than a skyscraper blueprint is not the skyscraper itself. DNA contains no memories, no thoughts, no dreams, no hopes, no fears, no desires - just a self-replicating chemical reaction that lays out how to develop such a mind that can eventually gain these things. It is *not* the mind itself. Just like if you destroy a blueprint you need only to print out or draw another copy, DNA is easily created.Your response?Also, one last question: Women have "cast out" embryos throughout recorded history. I know a girl who, after being raped at age 13, starved herself to terminate a pregnancy so that her parents wouldn't have to find out what happened to her (because she knew that her father would have gone out and killed the guy who did it, and ended up in jail for the rest of his life). Is "casting out" through herbal (such as Queen Anne's Lace seeds) or more brutal methods (such as starvation) a better alternative? Because that's what you need to choose here - people will abort pregnancies whether or not they can go to a clinic. They've done it throughout history, and they'll keep doing it.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-11-2003]

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I'll base my own criteria on this by watching to see how the woman's own body reacts to the fertilization event. As soon as that happens, her own chemistry starts to change very abbruptly and different hormones begin to be secreted to perform all sorts of functions to enhance the enviorment to maximize chances for the developing human to make it to birth.

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Our "chemistry" changes monthly, Lizard. Want a graph of how dramatic estradiol levels fluctuate each month? And it is not an instantaneous thing at conception, either, it takes time.

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You can by an EPD at any drug store for $8.00 and it can tell you with astounding accuracy (the exact stats I admit I don't have) that the homone levels have changed radically in the blood stream, so much so that it's detectable in the urine.

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Yeah, you have to wait over week though (you don't seem very familiar with them) - again, not concurrent with conception. In fact, even a blood test typically takes over 7 days to detect a clear change. Also, don't take too much stock in steroid hormones such as HCG being detectable in urine - for example, there's always estrogens in the urine, all that changes is the quantity. In fact, one type of estrogen replacement (Premarin) is made from distilled horse urine (no joke!).

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Chop my logic to bits but it doesn't change the sequence of events imidiatly after fertilization, and the body doesn't debate what to do next using intelect, just chemistry.

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Seing as it takes time for the body to clue in that there's a fertilized egg, that's hardly supportive of your "miraculous moment" notion of brainless humanity.BTW, you completely and utterly skipped two questions (and the thing that you answered wasn't really a question, just a statement of fact as to what is up for debate here), so you really need to try again.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-11-2003]

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The answer to you third question is since the women are going to abort anyway, sure lets make it as safe and pleasant as posible. The best face we can display as decent humans is to show these women more concern for them then they have for their unborn. (Boy that's going to get a firestorm response from a certain poster in this thread)

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Assuming that wasn't sarcasm (was it? It's always hard to tell over the internet), we're in agreement. I hope you weren't being sarcastic about the sort of situation that someone I was close to went through. I seriously hope that. If you were, I want you to stop and try and picture, as a 13 year old, being raped, finding out that you're pregnant, and then *starving yourself* to avoid having your parents find out.And yet, even people who aren't raped often feel the same extreme sense. I've talked with a person online whose friend killed herself after she got pregnant. This is not something to joke about.

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The answer to your second question is impossible for me to answer because if the DNA is really a blueprint for designing something that is as highly functioning as the human brain, capable of self awareness, then you are implying that DNA is and instruction language, and all languages must be based on a context. To have context you need an infussion of intelligence and that implies a grand design. I know that you are not a creationist so I don't think you can highlight the humanity issue here fairly and tie it in to morality without first addressing the issue of how we got from the proverbial pool of slime to self awareness and humanity by accident.

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How does this address #2? I'll repost #2, and boldface the question components:''1) Do you have any problem with killing human cells? I.e., if you had your spleen removed because of a car accident, would that be some sort of moral wrong?------------------
2) Do you have any problem with killing unique combinations of DNA that don't have complex thought processes? I.e., if you crushed a dandelion or a spider, would you see that as a moral wrong?If your answer to both of these is "No", how do you combine them to reach a great moral wrong? "Humanity" doesn't lie in DNA - it lies in human minds. Something without nerve cells has no mind, let alone a functioning human mind. DNA is a blueprint, no more than a skyscraper blueprint is not the skyscraper itself. DNA contains no memories, no thoughts, no dreams, no hopes, no fears, no desires - just a self-replicating chemical reaction that lays out how to develop such a mind that can eventually gain these things. It is *not* the mind itself. Just like if you destroy a blueprint you need only to print out or draw another copy, DNA is easily created.''
------------------I can tell that you don't want to have to address this, and would much rather go back to a standard creation/evolution information debate, but I'm not going to let you hehe

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I'm laughing as I type because I just did to you what my Dad always does to me by answering my question with a question. I don't mean to do this to you and if you get mad at me it's cool. I very much understand.

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That wasn't a question. Even if it was, it wouldn't be a problem - that's known as the Socratic Method, famously popularized by Socrates, and it's a perfectly reasonable way to debate.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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I am not the type of person that would make light of anyone's circumstance nor do I condem anyone for having an abortion for any reason as I've stated before. I'm not in their shoes so I am not in a position to pass judgement, nor is that my job or place to do so anyway. I know that there are thousands upon thousands of horror stories out there concerning abuse, rape and flat out bad luck and stupidity. My wife and I played it stupid ourselves and didn't wait till we were married. We never got pregnant though but that was pure fate and no result of either of us doing anything responsible about it. I liked what I saw and selfishly put my pleasures above displaying responsibility and respect towards her but that's subject matter for a different audience.

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So you do agree that abortion should be legal to prevent undue suffering - the goal should just be to discourage people from choosing that route. Because they can choose it anyway, but in much more brutal methods to their own bodies (or lives)?I think you will find that even most pro-choice people support having *some* regulation on the practice. In fact, I bet if you did a survey of pro choice people, you'd find that 90% of them would be perfectly fine with a system in which there are no regulations on birth control (apart from health and safety issues), minimal or no regulation on "morning after" products, a small level of councelling for a pregnancy in its first few weeks, a moderate level for late first trimester, heavy councelling requirements for end of first to early second, and no abortion after that, except for the cases where the mother and/or infant's health and safety are concerned.

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As far as your second question, I don't think it's wrong to remove a damaged spleen after an accident and if that is equivilent to aborting a fetus, then you've got me on logic and you win. I'm looking at my driver's licience and it says that I'm an organ doner so "Holy Crap Batman!", I guess I'm just dyin' to have a male equivelent abortion and I didn't even know it!! Time for me to face some demons tonight.

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Dandelions on the other hand - hands off those Lions. You pluck one of them out from your yard and the next day, 60 bazillion thousand million of his friends show up in your lawn for the funeral. Honestly, plant life doesn't play in the same moral ring in my world as unborn babies.

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Ignoring your attempt to insert humor into it, you acknowledge that there is nothing inherently wrong with killing human cells. You also acknowledge that there is nothing inherently wrong with destroying a unique combination of DNA. So, how do you combine these two things to get something that you view as so utterly immoral? Because what you're talking about is a cluster of cells, with a unique combination of human DNA. No thought, no consciousness (no nerves, even). No self, no sense of self, no identity. No hopes, no dreams, no ideas, no goals, no fears, no joys, no anything. Just like you can't live in a blueprint for a building, a "blueprint" for a possible human is not the same thing as an actualized human.Cogito, ergo sum.

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Before you judge a man you should walk a mile in his shoes. This way you are a mile from him, and you have his shoes.

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I'll have to remember that one, I like it ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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The more available and easier you make it for anyone to have an abortion for any reason, the less people are going to concern themselves with the responsibility of enguaging in intercourse and the more unwanted babies are going to be created and destroyed.

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That's completely preposterous. Noone would ever put their body through becoming pregnant and having an abortion (and paying for it) if at all necessary. It's preposterous to assume that people would, say, avoid spending a puny sum on birth control pills to instead pay for an abortion, and have to suffer the social stigma of it.

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I thought the availability of low cost safe abortions was a kind and humane gift to desperate women to save them from the back alley shiesters. So if anything, I would think that being called Pro Abortion would be a desirable affiliation because it conveys something positive - compassion.

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You're not getting it, despite constantly being told it: None of us *want* to see abortions happen. However, pregnancy and childrearing aren't some sort of game here. It's not a "whoops!" like you spill a glass of milk. It's about as completely serious, and life-affecting, life-altering, life-risking things that can happen to the average woman in her lifetime. If we were discussing an "inconvenience", none of us would ever support abortion. That's not what we're discussing. Thus, we support giving woman a "choice".

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So I don't care if 90% of pro choicers think it would be better to not have to have the abortion, that's an easy way to look good on both sides of the issue. But where the rubber meets the road, it's wishy washy gobbly gook.

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We choose not to make all-encompasing generalized value judgements for other people on things that will completely alter their life because "we feel we know better than them" what is right and wrong.

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The act ends a human life

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We're back to point 1 that I presented in my set of 3, now aren't we? That the only issue really up for debate here is whether the mother and the embryo are moral equivalents.

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Removing a damaged splene does not end a human life and removing a Dandelion definitly does not end the damn thing's life - this I can vehemetly attest to. A splene will never grow into it's own human entity, it's a part of the human organ lineup, but the cells making up the fetus are definitly going to become it's own human entity.

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Pick something other than a dandelion - an ant, then. You keep dodging, and I'm not going to let you skip out on this. 1) You see nothing wrong with killing human cells and destroying human DNA, correct? 2) You see nothing wrong with killing a unique combination of DNA, correct? 3) Why do you combine (1) and (2) to get something that you have a huge problem with? I am not asking you to equate either (1) or (2) individually to an abortion. However, what we are discussing is the combination of (1) and (2): Destroying something that is a unique combination DNA in a group of human cells.Furthermore, I would like to see my blueprint analogy addressed, and why you either A) feel that it is not representative of the situation, or B) feel that there is a tragedy in destroying a blueprint that is equal or nearly equal to the tragedy of destroying a building based off of it.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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The spirit aspect is also fairly easy to detect, especially when now the EEG and EKG show activity @ 40 days into the development.

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They also show activity on an tarantula. Does an ant have a spirit? Do abortions before day 40 have no moral issues about them?

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Then why would evolution start the creative process of building a human from initial cells without intending to finish the task and make it a human? Evolution wouldn't, every ovum that starts out is intended by nature to become a human once fertilized.

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Nope. Most of them abort before the woman even knows she would otherwise be pregnant. Also, if you want a "nature" argument, many species are far more brutal when it comes to the unborn (or the just-born), be it the mother denying a sickly baby milk, to shark offspring killing their less fit relatives inside the mother's body.

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What I don't understand is when man intervenes in evolution and willfully terminates the pregnancy, why all of a sudden is it taboo to call what has just been killed, a human.

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It's not taboo, it's just not true. "A human" has a functioning central nervous system, capable of things such as "thought" and "perception", unlike an early-term embryo. Do you deny this?

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"Well, it needs to be born to be a human or it needs to show brain activity" when everyone knows what's being stitched together by evoultionary forces in the womb.

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1) "Being born" is an arbitrary cutoff. "Showing brain activity" is not the whole case; insects show brain activity. Showing conscious thought is the key. We're talking about complex cerebellar function, not basic cerebral/brain stem activity.2) If you destroy half of a foundation of an apartment complex that is going up, are you driving dozens of families out of their homes? You're losing track of temporal reality, Lizard. You need to argue that was is being destroyed *is* fully human (not "will be if the woman who is pregnant doesn't starve or kill herself to end the pregnancy because you've supported banning safe abortion..."), and is of the same or close moral value as the woman who is pregnant.

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Pro Abortion = Pro Compassion
Pro Life = Pro Oppression

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That's a bit long for a label, don't you think?

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Then let the best face of the human race shine forth and be Pro Abortion because the more abortions that can be performed, the more compassion is manifest to an all to often victimized sect of our civilization - women.

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Utterly untrue. Forcing an abortion on a woman who doesn't want one is one of the worst things that one can possibly do. "The more abortions that can be performed, the more compassion" would be tyrrany and misery for women. Why do you not grasp this? For the last time, I will state it: please, NEVER repeat the strawman again:Abortion Is Never To Be Forced or Pressured On Anyone, And No One Is Advocating That.Your deliberate misrepresentation gets annoying fast.Finally, I will repeat what you have skipped addressing, for the third time. I'm not going to let you dodge it:-------------
Pick something other than a dandelion - an ant, then. You keep dodging, and I'm not going to let you skip out on this. 1) You see nothing wrong with killing human cells and destroying human DNA, correct? 2) You see nothing wrong with killing a unique combination of DNA, correct? 3) Why do you combine (1) and (2) to get something that you have a huge problem with? I am not asking you to equate either (1) or (2) individually to an abortion. However, what we are discussing is the combination of (1) and (2): Destroying something that is a unique combination DNA in a group of human cells.Furthermore, I would like to see my blueprint analogy addressed, and why you either A) feel that it is not representative of the situation, or B) feel that there is a tragedy in destroying a blueprint that is equal or nearly equal to the tragedy of destroying a building based off of it.
-------------------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-12-2003]

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The implication being that there are more parts to the whole than you suggest. One of those parts could be the existence of a soul...

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That is exactly what I would like to see Lizard Breath admit. That he is arguing for about as large of a violation of individual civil liberties as you can get (the ability to take action to prevent your life from being irrevocably altered - and if you're not ready, for the worse) because of his particular belief in a spiritual concept without a physical component. As this country is not a theocracy, that is an illegitimate line of argument for a legal ban.

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but on a more original note: The abortion of a fertilized cell is the destruction of a few human cells with a unique DNA signature, however that destruction destroys ALL of that unique DNA. It is not just a part of a whole; all of that unique human DNA is lost forever.

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You just restated the two points that I covered: The destruction of human DNA, and the destruction of all of a particular unique combination of DNA of a non-human species. To find a moral wrong, you have to believe that the combination is greater than the sum of its parts - that there is some sort of new magical element being added into the mix - a soul.Also, this doesn't address the "blueprint" example - but, again, that too fails in Lizard Breath's mind because of his "soul" concept - in his world, people already live in the blueprint itself .------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-12-2003]