Legal Death, Legal Life, Personhood and Abortion

Actually I tried to get at this point earlier, though I wasn't constructive enough to go look up (or estimate) actual percentage chances. I figured we were left with do nothing in life, or take acceptable (nonnegligent) risks and try to mediate the outcomes.His response, as far as I can tell, is not that we should end doing things with risk but accept the result of the risk.So if we go driving and the bad die roll turns up an accident we have to accept the injuries we receive. If we choose to have sex and the bad die roll turns up a pregnancy we have to accept the pregnancy all the way through birth which we receive.In the case of a car accident we can mediate the outcome by applying medical knowledge. In the case of pregnancy we cannot mediate the outcome with medical knowledge except to preserve the mother and the gestational being both.I can see the logic he is driving at, however it is still wholly religiously founded and so unacceptable for law. Medicine and many people would view the entity as you described in your essay (not a person), and perhaps even as simply a parasitic mass of growing cells (like a tumor), and there would be no objective way to say RR is right and everyone else is wrong. His position has a metaphysical assumption which would then be set over others to follow, including to the detriment of the mother.

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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)

Yes end with abortion, which to me is the same thing. I've addressed that already. Obviously we should be working towards another goal. Haven't I stated a few hundred times in this post, that I am for abortion when the child will be severly deformed? No it's not.
Do you remember anything from your first month of life? Some of them. But the first site was a government site.I love this quote Here are some more interesting links about suffering from abortion.
Page not found - Post-Abortion Bible Study Ramah InternationalThis one in specific answer to your question:
Page not found – AbortionFacts.comIt states some of the differences, healthwise, between having an abortion, and giving birth.

Wow, thats a great explanation, it all seems to fit now.

quote:

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two unique embryos begin developing in utero, but something goes wrong

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I didn't know you needed to go to 8+ years of college to get to that conclusion.Is the word something a medical term?

I want you to understand one thing, I do not hold anything against people who have abortions. Or people that believe that it is ok to have one.

I think the percentage chances that I used are very conservative because of their limited nature, only dealing with two known failure rates, one of zygotes that fail to implant and the other with natural miscarriages between week 1 and week 12. this still leaves a lot of time for more failures to occur. I would expect a decay type distribution with time and that the actual final success could be only 10% or less of the times when sexual behavior was engaged in and an egg was available for implantation.The point is that you cannot proscribe a behavior just because occasionally you can get an undesirable result. Humans regularly take many chances with more immediate bad effects than this, and car accidents in only one type.If you don't want sexual behavior to be allowed because it may result in an abortion, then you don't want car driving to be allowed because it may result in the death of a child.

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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}}}

Watch me stick up for RR... His argument is a bit more clever than what you are describing, though admittedly that is what I thought he was saying as well! This is actually a strawman. Hopefully RR is watching so he can now understand what we mean by a strawman, and then go back and figure out what he was doing to you.He wasn't saying sex shouldn't be allowed because of risk X, he was saying that if YOU are afraid of risk X then you shouldn't have sex. People prepared to accept X can go ahead and have sex, just as people prepared to accept the consequences of traffic accidents should go ahead and drive.See the difference?For you and I we see X as "getting pregnant which can be removed or allowed to continue", for RR X is simply "getting pregnant and except in known dangerous circumstances allowing it to continue through birth".This is of course because he views abortion as NOT accepting the outcome which is "life". He analogized this to having your child killed in order to save you from the effects of a car wreck.There are some problems because it becomes a bit circular, but from a purely assumed moral stance of life as protected state and zygote as life, it makes some logical sense.

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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)

But he also wants others to refuse to engage in sex because of the riskif the risk for them is less than the risk of a car accident, and RR and his cohorts continue to drive cars regardless of that riskthen it is either a matter of a double standard or the imposition of a religious view onto others not bound by it.If you are going to have a standard apply to all people it must be consistent.the "life at conception" standard fails this test.This message has been edited by RAZD, 02-24-2005 07:00 AM

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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}}}

I don't seem to be getting my point across. He is not saying others should refuse to engage in sex because of the risk of pregnancy. You are right that if he was saying that then the car analogy is totally appropriate.What he is saying is that if one is afraid of the risk of pregnancy (and that means the duty of trying to bring it through till birth because abortion is not an option) then you should not have sex. He would likely agree that if one is afraid of the risk of a car accident one should not be driving as well.His is an artificial dilemma in that it does not include abortion as one of the outcomes, as it was a priori excluded by a moral rule against abortion. But that does not make it hypocritical.This is a nuanced difference.

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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)

you can see it that wayor you can see it that if the choice would be for having an abortion then you shouldn't engage in sexperhaps the riVeRrat should clarify HIS position.

Here is an update on stem cell research from outside the US (of course)
FROM: Fetal skin cells help heal burn wounds in children (click]
Note that the use of such cells from miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) should remove any ethical barriers that have so hindered such valuable research in the US. Also note, that as discussed before this would be a matter of the "appropriate surrogate" - in this case the family - making the decision whether or not the cells should be used: this would be no different from decisions on organ donations.(Not that I think there is an ethical problem with using fetal stem cells from any source as long as it is with the parents consent.)Enjoy

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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}}}

let me mention, if it has not already been covered (if it has then let's mention it again) the Cord Blood Registry - Brandyn's story. This is one of the little known things we can support with no moral qualms.This message has been edited by jar, 08-21-2005 02:28 PM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

FROM: FDA Delays Morning-After Pill Decision (click)
Can someone explain to me why this pill should not be as available as condoms are for men, and why we need to be concerned about the misuse of this pill?To me we should be more concerned with it not being available enough.That would be erring on the side of safety yes?

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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}}}

From http://EvC Forum: Abortion

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There is no point at which the elements that form a fetus are not alive: the sperm is alive, the unfertilized egg is alive, but we do not call them {human persons}; the nutrients consumed by the mother are transformed and carried by the living cells from mother to {zygote\blastocyst\embryo\fetus\child}, they don't suddenly "switch on" in the developing cell material where the only contribution of {the conception} is the material in one (1) cell that is short lived; the material that makes up the duplicating portions of dividing cells comes {from\through} the mother, not the original cell, and old cell material becomes degraded, replaced and flushed out of the system. There are more sloughed off dead and living cells in the amniotic fluid surrounding a late term fetus than the number needed to form the first (20 day) stages of {zygote\blastocyst\embryo} growth.FROM: Filtration and recirculation of early amniotic fluid. Evaluation of cell cultures from 100 diagnostic cases. -- Entrez PubMed (click)
No one claims that these discarded living cells free floating in the amniotic fluid have any special value, yet they are not significantly different from the zygote formed by the joining of a sperm and an egg: they are just {alive flesh}.

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There is also the issue of the cells that go to produce the placenta and the umbilical cord (see comment from jar). These cells are also just {alive flesh} with no special significance to the {human} or {person} issue. The placenta at birth has more cells than a fetus at 12\13 weeks, but is relegated to the dustbin with no real ceremony, there is no special status for this batch of {alive flesh}.and only 5.7% of abortions occur after week 13.

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I will work this in to the formal essay I have on this.EnjoyThis message has been edited by RAZD, 09*01*2005 08:05 PM

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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}}}

Abortion is making the rounds again, and thus this may be discussed more, but it is already at 314 posts. It may be time to start a{Legal Death, Legal Life, Personhood and Abortion II} thread ...

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Join the effort to unravel {AIDSHIV} with Team EvC! (click)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

I know this is off topic but the logic for this position is not comprehended by me. Rat,
You have expressed that you believe abortion is killing a human being. However, you believe that an "innocent" human beings should die for the actions of another human being?So, you believe that rape should carry a death sentence, but not for the rapist but for the conceived child.Should we start another thread so you can show how you reconcile this with your belief about "abortions of convenience"?