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Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Ah, my apologies. Thanks, Messenjah.
------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Unfortunately, no - you'll have to butcher the english language like the rest of us ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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?
quote: 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?
quote: 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.
quote: 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."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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!).
quote: 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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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
quote: 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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: I'll have to remember that one, I like it ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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".
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: They also show activity on an tarantula. Does an ant have a spirit? Do abortions before day 40 have no moral issues about them?
quote: 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.
quote: 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?
quote: 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.
quote: That's a bit long for a label, don't you think?
quote: 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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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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]
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