Senate Abortion: Why not?

America needs a butt out policy.

 

Okay, that's a fair assessment. And I agree with #2 wholeheartedly.

 

It is the 21st Century and we're still debating whether or not women should have control over their own reproductive system.....

 

The overabundance of people with strong opinions and without a uterus will never stop blowing my mind.

 

i honestly think the evangelical reluctance to accept abortion as a viable, amoral medical procedure is rooted more in their weird, cultural inability to acknowledge that sex is a thing people do and their continued refusal to deal with the consequences of that in any critical, meaningful way than their screwy exegesis. the bible doesn't really have that much to do with it -- it's cultural.

 

it used to be that abortion was the only issue about which zero communication and common ground was possible across the demarcation line of disagreement. But these days every political issue seems to take on that level of urgency. We can never find common ground on abortion, sure, but now there's also no common ground on anything else either.

 

^this post would have been way funnier with the barbara bush avatar saying it

 

It's called the Second Amendment.

 

This place is a lot more interesting when people with different can come in a share. Wouldn't you agree?

You guys keep comparing parts of a living organism, such as cancer or hair, to an individual living organism such as a fetus. Keep in mind that while the mother provides the nourishment and the environment for the fetus, the fetus is a separate and unique being.

While I don't condone the death penalty nor killing someone for stealing, even you can see the difference between killing the innocent and killing the guilty?

 

I do see a difference which is why I don't agree with the death penalty.


I don't however see a blastocyst as a person.

 

honestly not sure. still trying to parse this sentence.

 

There's a heck of a lot of difference between undifferentiated cells and a human being. There's also a difference between a collection of cells and that collection having a brain, nerves, etc.

In short, at the beginning, a fertilized egg goes through a process of developing into a human being. At some point in its development, it becomes a human being.

Until that point (and of course until birth, goes without saying) is subsisting on its host mother's systems and is not an autonomous person. It should be the mother's decision (hopefully, she chose to use BC before sex, etc. but it's not 100% effective).

Once the fetus reaches that development stage (determined IMHO by medical, not religious folks), it's right to finish developing until birth most definitely should be considered.

 

J-Rod you've been throwing around the statement that science (specifically biology) backs up your claim that unborn fetuses are human beings. Now's the time for you to demonstrate this science.

 

You'll note that I've not used nonreligious beliefs as part of any debate regarding abortion.

Only science.

A fetus is an individual life. And it's human. It should be treated as such. All of this coming from the side that always talks about taking care of the most defenseless. About giving voice to the voiceless.

Meh. I forget the word "views."

 

Read the posts. It's all there.

 

J-Rod:

Whether or not you brought up religious objections to abortion, it is one of the driving objections, all based on defining "human life" at either fertilization or implantation.

But a human being is differentiated cells with nerves, a brain, etc. MAYBE even consciousness of its own needs.

Are you nervous that pro-choicers are on a slippery slope argument where next they'll get to redefine some other "non-human-being" thing and argue for its cessation?

If so, that would be a point to debate.

But a mass of cells can't breath, eat, think,cry, feel pain...it's cells still. Until some future time.

 

I'd like to point out the fallacy in J-Rod's argument that unborn fetuses are "innocent."

They are not; they are stained with sin (ORIGINAL sin, in fact). They have not yet been baptized and therefore are sinners.

QED

Not innocent!

 

You most certainly have not. You've just been declaring your statements as science.

 

**** that's a good point.

 

itt JROD DECLARES SCIENCE

 

The only thing I see is misogyny, not science.

 

It's a separate and unique collection of cells. The earliest one sees any evidence of the foetus responding in utero to external stimulus is about 16 weeks, at which point they've been observed responding to hearing music. Typically the terminations you're concerned about occur prior to this point.

So the distinction, my friend, is a deliberate one. If a child was born with no cognitive abilities - all their CNS functions performed as intended. That is, they were able to take in food and water, they continued to breathe proportionate to their needs, and they broke down food and passed excessed to waste. But they were incapable of any form of thought. They could not react to stimuli. A panoramic image, such as standing on the grand canyon, evoked nothing. They felt nor fear nor courage; not joy nor sadness, not anxiety nor elation. Nothing. They were existing, but the act of living, that which defines us as human and not animal nor vegetable.

Their life had, in other words, no milestones to measure itself again. No feeling. No purpose.

Is that a human being, if you cannot see anything that defines us as human?

Innocence though is a subjective term and requires the free will to make informed decisions. If a foetus or even zygote is terminated and cannot exercise discretion it's neither innocent nor guilty, hence why Catholics too time out of shagging little boy arse to formulate the concept of limbo*.

(* Note - unlikely to have transpired this exact way)

Moreover, in the instances above - the judicial system has an unacceptably high rate of failure with respect of convicting innocent persons in capital cases. So the distinction between guilty and innocent there is already meaningless since the judiciary cannot faultlessly punish the guilty each time. Similarly, the separation of powers removed from the hands of the people any actual inherent right to formulate a guilty verdict, so people exercising lethal force and the growth of these stand your ground laws is at best blur the lines and at worse violate the separation of powers principle. Self-defence law allows proportionate force to be exercised when a reasonable threat is made to one's own life. Shooting someone for breaking in to steal your TV is indefensible philosophically and serves only to highlight how, in practice, the notion of 'innocent and guilty' is horribly blurred in modern society.

 

Deciding where life begins based on arbitrary lines, such as birth, first trimester, viability outside the womb, is dangerous thinking. Conception is not arbitrary. It happens at the same time for all of us. And it's when new, unique DNA has been formed and life actually begins with the reproductions of new, individualized cells. Only a live, full term birth is as strong of a line.

So now we get to decide who's human and who isn't? There is a next step from there. The fact is either all human life is sacred and has inalienable rights or no lives do. Because once you can decide from one, you can decide for any.

Are you saying that genetics is a religious philosophy? Because I'm certain it is, in fact, a science. And genetics shows that DNA of the baby killed during an abortion is not part of the mother, but rather a different individual. And it further shows that the baby killed was also human. So far, all science.

Now, is it life? How could it not be life? But again, here's an article based on science that shows both sides. Of course the evil side only has the weak arguement that binary thinking isn't good while not actually addressing the points of the right side saying that life does actually begin at conception. http://harvardmagazine.com/2004/07/debating-the-moral-statu.html It's an interesting arguement and while it isn't a smoking gun it gives my points better than I have been.
"The principle to which I subscribe is one that says that all human beings are equal, and ought not to be harmed or considered to be less than human on the basis of age or size or stage of development or condition of dependency." Fertilization "produces a new and complete, though immature, organism" that possesses "the epigenetic primordia for self-directed growth into adulthood with its determinateness and identity fully intact." Although not all fertilization events lead to an adult, we were all once embryos in the blastocyst stage of development, he points out. We possessed all of the genetic material needed to inform and organize our growth. Ender Sai

Again, all science.

What have I said in my reasoning to indicate that gender plays a role in anything?!?!
But hey, judging by your avatar we can at least agree that Sasha Banks is a shining light in today's WWE.

 

You're a male, lecturing women, on what they can and cannot do with their body.