Evangelical Switch from Pro-choice to Anti-abortion

Percy writes: Most certainly, but I wasn't saying anything so obvious.

But I was, and I did so many times.

You split it right before the qualifying phrase that the continuum has increasing harm with termination.

Yes, I did that deliberately to show the two parts to the argument, the bit we agree on and the bit we don't. That way we can avoid doing what we're doing now - arguing about things we agree on.

Harm is also a legal principle and it *is* applied to animals regardless of vet's bills. You can not torture your own dog. It's another subjective moral position.

I said I don't know.

And I'm trying to understand why you don't know. I doubt that there are many people in the world that wouldn't simply know that it would be wrong to arbitrarily kill a baby immediately before birth. Most I suspect would assume that it was first degree murder. This isn't a fine decision to my mind, and I suspect to everyone else's here, it's unthinkable.

You conclusion about a moral duty to protect the fetus is your own view and is nowhere found in Roe v. Wade.

When I typed that I knew you'd jump at this tiny little escape route. I doesn't say moral or ethical and it also says that there's no legal precedent, but still it made a decision in favour of the baby. On what possible grounds other than moral or ethical could that decision have been made?

You are correct that it is "simply declared that the State a 'compelling interest'", but that isn't equivalent to declaring it a moral position.

What word would you prefer and why on earth do you think it matters? The state says that it is wrong to kill a baby after x weeks. It was compelling. Why has it said that?

No, I don't agree with this.

You bloodywell did!

Percy writes: I think my position is summed up pretty well in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision quoted in the same Abortion in the United States artcil you cited in your Message 369

Faith writes: It is never at any point something OTHER than a human being, it is always the same biological stuff at different stages of development, having from the start the whole genetic program of a human being.

How many human beings do you know that do not have a brain?

Because a 1-week-after-conception baby does not have a brain.
Therefore, a 1-week-after-conception baby is not a human being.

Yes, it's developing.
Yes, if given the right resources and care and time, it will grow a brain.

But - at this point - it still does not have a brain.

To call such a thing a "human being" is to mangle the definition of "human being" so much as to make it useless. And we then require other words to describe a human being vs a baby-in-development-that-will-likely-one-day-become-a-human-being-but-is-not-a-human-being-yet.

It's a sliding scale. And we don't know exactly where along the lines it goes from "become human" to "being human."

To argue that killing a combined sperm-and-egg is worse than kill separate sperms and separate eggs is to become as absurd as Tangle's other-end-absurdity: to say that killing a baby moments-before-it's-born is better than killing a baby moments-after-it's-born.

Combining sperm and egg is not a useful point in the process for determining when the baby is human - it's obviously way too early.
Just as "when it's born" is not a useful point in the process for determining when the baby is human - it's usually way too late.

Even if we ever do find a point, it only helps the decision. It doesn't make the decision.
The decision involves lives:
Baby
Mother
Care Givers
Care Giver's other children

No life is greater than any other.
All must be considered.

Sometimes killing a live baby will be a mercy for them and save all the lives of the others anyway.
For example: The baby has an issue that causes immense pain all the time. It will die within a few years of life. If the baby lives, the care-givers will go bankrupt providing what care-they-can to sustain the pain of this baby for as long as possible (or, as some would put it - to "prolong the life of the baby as long as possible.") It's not always moral to prolong the life of anything as long as possible. For many various reasons.

Sometimes keeping a non-living-baby so that it becomes human will enhance the lives of all involved.

There are a plethora of in-betweens on that spectrum. Each and every one should always be taken on a case-by-case basis.

To presume that such issues can all be swiftly answered by "knowing when the baby becomes human" displays a vast ignorance of the moral decision and complicated situation in question.

When the baby becomes human is a part of the moral situation - and an interesting, and important one to understand if at all possible.
But don't make it all-important, or else you're just as inhumane as anyone who wants to kill all babies.

I think your complaint's a red herring distracting from the real issue, that the point of viability cannot be objectively established.

Not a red herring. For a large number of folks in the US, we can say a lot about the available technology and about what would constitute viability of the unborn. In fact, our jurisprudence uses rough rules of thumb regarding viability, with the envelope being pushed in the states as technology improves.

Yes, there is some "variability", but we have some basic and objective ways to talk about viability. You are simply incorrect about that.

I've said many times that I don't *know

Yes, you have said that. I maintain that there is not much doubt about the issue for which your own answer is "I don't know."

Is US law based upon fact or upon feelings and opinions?

Of course, there is some opinion involved. Hopefully, it is informed opinion.One thing we can say with regard to the legal definition is that it does give us an answer. Your own answer uses the term personhood. I asked you if you meant something other than the legal definition, and instead of either answering or helping me understand what you meant, you posted this question. How does that help?

This is what I mean by sophistry. There is no way the process to becoming a human being could be inaugurated except by something that had all the stuff for making a human being already present.

There are no brains or lungs or heart in a fertilized egg prior to attachment to the uterus. Your comment is ridiculous. All of the stuff for making them does not cut it, just as all of the stuff for making cookies does not make them cookies before when they are still raw ingredients. What you are doing is rewording the idea that the potential is there, and ignoring the fact that the potential for becoming a human life does not make a human life.

You have the potential for making great arguments. But this one is not of them.

If you want to make the argument that the potential for being human is sufficient reason not to abort, then at least such arguments have some consistency. This one does not.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Stile writes: Tangle's other-end-absurdity: to say that killing a baby moments-before-it's-born is better than killing a baby moments-after-it's-born.

For the record, Tangle says that there is no difference between killing a baby just before birth and killing it just after. It's Percy that seems to think that there is.

How on earth these mistakes keep being made is interesting but very frustrating.

Tangle writes: For the record, Tangle says that there is no difference between killing a baby just before birth and killing it just after. It's Percy that seems to think that there is.

I know, that's how I intended it to be taken. Well, I'm not sure if Percy really thinks there is either... but only Percy can say that (and it doesn't really matter for this minor clarification anyway.)
Any lack of clarity of that intention is my fault, however.

I meant to say that the idea that the baby is any different moments before and after birth is absurd - and that you were the one pushing the discussion of this idea earlier in the thread.

There are no brains or heart or lungs right after attachment either, it is you who are making no sense. I am not "ignoring" that the potential does not make you human, I am correctly using the term human in the biological/ genetic sense and in that sense the fertilized egg is a human life. It is a POTENTIAL human being if you are measuring it by some stage of development you may choose to define, a stage where brains, lungs, heart are developed perhaps. But it is no less a human life before those organs have developed, biologically genetically and just based on the fact that it will inexorably develop into a full human being if we leave it alone.

That is the whole point made in the article though you want to deny it. Why else would scientific knowledge of what happens at conception cause the medical profession to change their understanding of when the fetus becomes human?

I haven't called it a "human being," I've been calling it a human life. The point is that GENETICALLY it is a human life. You are talking about stages of development, fine, but genetically, biologically it is a human life from conception.

There are no brains or heart or lungs right after attachment either, it is you who are making no sense.

I did not claim that the zygote became human life after attachment. My claim is that I can identify a time when the zygote is not a human life. I could identify some further stages as well, but I don't need to do so for this argument.

So it is not that I am making no sense. It is that once again I have broken my promise not to argue with a complete moron. I'm back on the wagon.

I've been asking for people to designate a stage at which they consider the fetus human in the sense that they would not abort it. Genetically it is a human life from conception but there are stages at which it is more easily identified as human than others, and that's where you should be focused.

Faith writes: I've been asking for people to designate a stage at which they consider the fetus human in the sense that they would not abort it.

And my answer is that there is no such point period; any decision related to abortion is far more complex than just a time line.

Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

And my answer is that there is no such point period

What I will suggest is that the question is flawed. The question implies abortion an elective question with easy choices. But it is not as if anyone is looking for babies to abort. What if I asked instead, is there any time at which I would not endanger an unborn to save my wife's life. For me, that answer is no, but thank God I have never had to make that call.

Faith writes: I've been asking for people to designate a stage at which they consider the fetus human in the sense that they would not abort it.

I agree with jar.

Any line drawn based on something so simple for such a complicated problem is going to be right a few times, and wrong a lot of times.

You'll have to add some more information around your example in order to get a straight answer.

I would suggest asking something like this:

Given a near-perfect situation where:

-The baby (if born) will go to loving care-givers and given average-levels of resources to prosper (any average family).
-The pregnant woman has no abnormal health considerations
-The baby has no abnormal health considerations

That is to say: the only moral consideration is the care-giver's choice to lead their lives the way they want vs the care-giver's having a baby.
Is there some point where:

Before this point, the baby's life is inconsequential because (basically) it doesn't really have a life. Killing the baby here isn't really a moral problem.
After this point, the baby's life is highly consequential because (basically) it's another human being. Killing the baby here is a much larger moral problem.

Is that similar to the question you're attempting to get at?

If so - I don't have an answer for this, either.

First of all - I don't think this sort of "near perfect" situation exists in reality. It's too clean.
Second - I think any "point" on this highly-specific though-experiment would be wrong in the same sense that any "line for all abortions" would be wrong. It's a scale - so any point or line will be right a few times, and wrong a lot.

Maybe no point exists.
Maybe a point for one baby is different from another.
Maybe one baby does have a point such as this, but other babies do not.

The best I can offer right now, with the science and my moral position on "the brain's functionality/existence represents our being human" I can only give you a range. With along the range having the baby being "more than just alive but hardly human at all" and at the end of the range being "should likely be considered human."

But the problem is that even with a range - each baby will develop at their own pace. Most will be about the same. Some will be slow. Others fast. That forces the range to have a low value in the 4-9 weeks range. And a high value in the 7-30ish range.

Which is, basically, useless to the point of being silly to try and use it anywhere. The error margins are just so unknown at the moment that we cannot produce any viable numbers. Maybe that's because our science isn't good enough yet. Or maybe it's because "viable numbers" don't exist for such a process.

Genetically it is a human life from conception...

This usage of the term "human life" makes the term "human life" useless in determining when it becomes a difficult-moral-question in ending the life of the baby.

Tangle writes: Stile writes: Tangle's other-end-absurdity: to say that killing a baby moments-before-it's-born is better than killing a baby moments-after-it's-born. For the record, Tangle says that there is no difference between killing a baby just before birth and killing it just after. It's Percy that seems to think that there is.

Percy doesn't know if there is.

How on earth these mistakes keep being made is interesting but very frustrating.

Yes, very.

--Percy

You can determine humanness by its biology or genetics as I'm doing, which can only start at conception, or you can determine it some other way. I'm not the one who wants to determine it some other way although I've suggested some grounds that might be considered. If there is no way to make such a determination then I guess it does have to be decided on a case by case basis whether circumstances warrant abortion or not. I'm assuming normal healthy conditions for the development from conception to birth of a normal healthy embryo- to-infant in everything I've said.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.