I noted that the mother provides a stable environment in which the fetus can grow. It grows with help from the mother. The mother is not the one growing it. It grows itself.
*That is ad hominem.
Why should it be treated as though it cannot be?
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Abortion
- Thread starter Janenmori
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I noted that the mother provides a stable environment in which the fetus can grow. It grows with help from the mother. The mother is not the one growing it. It grows itself.
*That is ad hominem.
Why should it be treated as though it cannot be?
I know that, I didn't say you were wrong. Obviously you are correct when you say that the mother provides a (usually) stable environment for fetuses to grow. I just correctly said that growing is not the only requirement for being alive (for at least the 10th time in the last 1.5 pages now).
Also, uhh if it needs help from the mother than it is not growing by itself.
First of all, that is not ad hominem. I correctly said that you ignored the most important part of my quote when you replied, so your reply was irrelevant. An ad hominem attack would be "youre just a stupid douche with no scientific background, how can YOU make that claim?" I was clearly attacking your argument, not you. I asked you about homeostasis and you responded by talking about growing.
Secondly, you are advocating banning abortion because it *can be* a human under the right circumstances. I am saying that we should make a decision based on what it *is*- a non-living clump of cells that kinda-sorta resembles people. I think we should ban metal, because it can become a bullet used to murder someone!
I fixed that for you. So your justification of "killing" a fetus is simply based around it technically not being alive? So it has no human rights even though it is technically human? What about the psychological ramifications of removing the thing growing inside a woman? Even if it is unwanted, the bond and closeness shared is unparalleled by anything a person can experience. Terminating such a bond is unhealthy for the mother, even if she does not want the "potential child".
And what of ethics? Is it ok to take away someone's chance at life simply because they were a mistake or the result of a crime against the mother? Do they not deserve the chance to live because they are not at the moment while they are actually growing into something that they can support by themselves? I mean, come on, taking the chance at life away from something that is so helpless as a fetus, that is low, at least ethically.
Ok this is just getting ridiculous. What am I saying that is so confusing? I'm starting to lean towards "youre trolling". Having human DNA does not make you a living human. Abraham Lincoln has human DNA- does that make him living?
My justification for abortion is that it is beneficial to the mother who cant afford to have children for any reason. I also think that since the fetus is a part of the mothers body (you said this yourself- the fetus cant live on its own), the mother should have the option of doing whatever she wants with her body and reproductive system.
I am refuting your argument that abortion should be banned because fetuses are people. Since fetuses are not alive, they can not be people. Fetuses do not fulfill all the shared characteristics of life, therefore it is not alive. Having SOME traits of life is not the same as having ALL of them.
From an ethical standpoint, it is BETTER to terminate the pregnancy before the fetus gains consciousness.
I know it is going to be hard for you to walk away from your moral high horse here, but unless you can come up with something better than "it has DNA!" I would just stop posting. Having DNA, growing, resembling humans, those are all characteristics of life. However, homeostasis is also a characteristic of life. The simple fact is that fetuses do not fulfill every requirement of being deemed "living", so you calling a fetus a human child is flat wrong.
So women aren't capable of making decisions for themselves. Instead, let's have a bunch of politicians make that decision for them, certainly they know better.
Thanks to oxytocin, giving up a child for adoption is much more likely to cause psychological damage than your anecdote. Forcing a teen/impoverished/alcoholic/otherwise unprepared mother to raise the kid is going to cause more than just psychological damage.
Kids are a huge responsibility, not everyone is fit to be a parent and there should be considerable deliberation before making that choice even in a committed relationship. Not everyone should have kids, especially not under the circumstances of "oops, I'm 16 and on welfare with no dad in sight".
Aborting a fetus in a committed relationship where both partners are able to raise the kid is irresponsible, yes, but restricting a woman's reproductive rights to punish them for having sex is very 19th century, and a slippery slope.
Obviously, you have not been reading my arguments. The DNA makes them human. NOT LIVING. Just human. I never insinuated that the DNA meant that they were alive.
Calling a fetus a human child is wrong, but fortunately I never did that. I never said it WAS a human child. I said that it was human. I said that it was alive. I said it had the potential to be a child. Stop picking and choosing pieces of my argument to dissect.
You saying that it is not alive is "just flat wrong." You say that they do not fulfill all the qualities of life and are therefore not alive. They are alive, but they require assistance to achieve the point where they can maintain homeostasis. Just because they require help does not mean they are not alive. Sure they do not fulfill all the so-called "required fields", but that does not make them not living. That is ridiculous. By your logic, anyone who requires an oxygen tank to stay alive is not alive.
couldnt find the actual post in which you went on about 'post abortion syndrome' but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST how the absolute fuck can you use that in an argument? Do you have any idea the damage an unwanted pregnancy does to a woman, mentally? And you use potential psychological damage as justification for disallowing abortion then state a woman who has been raped should continue the pregnancy. Sick. Truly sick. You have absolutely no idea.
Obviously he would only consider the mental ramifications that benefit his argument. Good catch, I didn't even notice how ridiculous his concern for mental health is when he is advocating removing the decision from the lives of the women whose lives are destroyed by an unwanted pregnancy. He apparently doesn't grasp the concept that not all pregnancies are planned, romantic experiences between consenting adults.
Right, it doesn't make them alive. A fetus is not alive. I'm glad you have finally established that.
So if a fetus is not a human child, why do you think it is wrong to get rid of it, especially if it is harmful to the mother to keep it? You keep going in circles here and its starting to annoy me. I swear to god i am going to flip out if you respond to this with "because it has POTENTIAL to be a human being!" and bring this argument around for another circle.
Actually, my saying that it is not alive is flat out correct, and you even agreed with me (the first quote of yours in this post).
If someone is being kept alive artifically, they obviously have acquired the means of maintaining homeostasis. Disabled people have means of achieving homeostasis on their own, while fetuses require outside help. If a person who requires an oxygen tank fails to get the oxygen tank, they die. Just like if a fetus did not have its mother giving it everything it needs, it too ceases development. Disabled people can still help themselves maintain homeostasis, while fetuses can not. Also, a fetus being kept alive outside of the mother's womb completely negates the need for an abortion. They are completely different cases. You are trying to argue about aborting non-living (by your own words) fetuses but now youre talking about aborting people that are actually conscious and in homeostasis...
Also, just because abortion is legal doesnt mean that you HAVE to get one. The word "choice" means that if you dont think abortion is justified, then DONT GET ONE.
Why would humanity have anything to do with the morality of abortion anyway? Killing an adult is wrong because human adults can feel pain and sadness and regret. These are traits of the brain and the nerves and all that stuff, not of 'humans'. There's no inner switch that makes someone 'human', there's water and proteins and bits of DNA. If, say, chimpanzees can feel pain or even sadness, then killing them would be wrong.
Yeah, fetuses are genetically human.
So what? Buckets of paint are the same as a painting.
Yeah, fetuses are genetically human.
So what? Buckets of paint are the same as a painting.
caelum already said it but "alive at the cellular level = alive". Obviously the cells that make up the fetus/embryo maintain homeostasis, so they cannot be non-alive.
In other words, you presented an argument for abortion that also legitimizes infanticide. Good job.
In other words, you presented an argument for abortion that also legitimizes infanticide. Good job.
The individual cells are alive, but that doesn't mean that the fetus as a being is alive. If the cells are not organized as one being, it is just a clump of cells and also not alive by the same definition that requires homeostasis. I find it hard to believe that something with no heartbeat and no nervous system would ever qualify as alive, but I digress.
What? Infants feel pain, and sadness too. Akuchi's funny comment aside, how does what he said imply that infanticide is good, at all? He clearly said that if even chimps feel pain, then killing them is wrong...
You know, in all this, I think there is something we're forgetting about:
Regardless of whether or not the foetus is alive and how long it has been around for, abortion requires hospital services. Every time a woman goes to have an abortion, she is taking up some of the hospital's resources and, indeed, the place of a patient. A man requiring cancer treatment for example could have to wait for a healthy woman to terminate her unborn child. I would have thought that when it comes to medical treatment in a hospital, unhealthy people should take priority over healthy people. I sincerely hope that the example I gave is a false one.
Regardless of whether or not the foetus is alive and how long it has been around for, abortion requires hospital services. Every time a woman goes to have an abortion, she is taking up some of the hospital's resources and, indeed, the place of a patient. A man requiring cancer treatment for example could have to wait for a healthy woman to terminate her unborn child. I would have thought that when it comes to medical treatment in a hospital, unhealthy people should take priority over healthy people. I sincerely hope that the example I gave is a false one.
Have you ever heard of an abortion clinic? Women dont go to the ER if they want an abortion. There are trained professionals. The same doctor treating a cancer patient and performing an abortion on the side is an extremely unlikely situation...so yeah, your example is off the mark.
Trained professionals that would still be doing something else if they weren't aborting.
I'm not going to read 5 pages of a topic that's been discussed several times already. I'll just throw in my opinion, which is that abortion should be legal yet regulated so it isn't abused.
It is costly to a healthcare system (like mine anyway) and outside of rape (and danger to herself), the woman should have to pay for the abortion if she's already been aborted once before.
No shit, sherlock. Hey, I've got an idea - let's totally ban all non-essential cases from being seen!
Your example is just.. weird. Really, really weird. Your use of the word 'child' is pretty telling though. Emergency admissions work on a triage basis. Unless there is immediate threat to the pregnant woman's life, that isn't the case. You're like.. suggesting the banning of all specialist departments as far as I could tell. Should I stop going and being treated for my back pain because there's car accident victims who need to learn to walk again..?
Wrong, the world fetus comes from latin and means "offspring", "bringing forth", "hatching of young".
Tell these people to work hard. How can they work hard if they cannot even eat???
Those people don't live in a western democracy. In fact they probably live in a hellhole run by a tinpot dictator who fancies himself supreme ruler, like Darfur or Zimbabwe. Nice non-sequiter though. Hey, you know where you can find a bunch of people just like these? Stalinist Russia and Communist China. Heckuva job there with the "people's revolution" lefties.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...es-83-stone-family-claim-simply-fat-work.html
These people live in a democracy. Do you think hard work might pull them out of poverty, or are you going to tug at my heartstrings with people whose government routinely exploits their work for "the greater good:" keeping the dictator fat and happy.
Finally, and I will make this explicitly clear for both you, jrrr, and Jaenmori:
A fetus is alive.
We would not be having a discussion of abortion if it involved the taking of an inanimate and useless nothing. We just had a topic on embryonic stem cells where I was referred to as anti-science because I didn't believe in government funding for a thus-far useless sideshow.
Your arguments regarding homeostasis as necessary for life are equally preposterous. Pregnancy and the womb are biologically designed for the express purpose of giving the growing child homeostasis. You will find that if you remove oxygen, water, and food from any human being at any level of development they will die. No being is truly homeostatic because they all require inputs. Your example requires those inputs be denied.
Nobody thought the embryonic stem cells were unworthy enough to receive federal funding in that topic. Obviously they consider something at that stage of development to be valuable despite their insistence that abortion is morally neutral. They want it both ways. It appears that early-stage cellular developments in the womb are useful enough to deserve federal funding for investigation unless you intend to actually give birth to one.
Would anyone who supports embryonic stem cells like to tell me they are not alive? If they are not, then why would we funneling money to dead matter be a moral imperative? While it is amusing to watch people tap dance around exactly what qualifies as life, the basic fact is the objects in question are metabolically active, can reproduce, and because they have human DNA they are being plumbed to cure diseases.
Why people find an embryonic stell cell valuable but still pretend abortion isn't destroying a human life is inherently illogical, but they do it just the same. They decry the destruction or non-use of embryonic stem cell lines because of all the lost potential but don't bat an eyelash over an abortion, when the object to be destroyed is the same.
Finally jrrrr, the last abortion clinic to be bombed was in 1993, IIRC. That would make it 16 years ago. It caused outrage in the pro-life movement and set it back years precisely because the media is a propaganda arm of the pro-abortion movement. Pro-lifers were glad when the perpetrator was tried and imprisoned. Abortion clinics mistreat women today.
But in all actuality my argument does not even need fetuses to be dead, alive, or otherwise. My argument is that abortion itself is an unnecessary blight that causes physical and emotional damage for no justifiable benefit. No poor girl who has had an abortion is any better off after the abortion that she was before it. She will continue to make the same mistake. Abortion clinics are complicit in child abuse and enable child rapists to get away unscathed, or perhaps I'm too broad: The government subsidized abortion clinic, Planned Parenthood, enables child rape and is complicit in child abuse.
Progressives are always saying to get the government out of abortion, but they never quite get around to cutting Planned Parenthood's subsidy.
How does abortion enable child rape? How? Explain that to us.
True, but irrelevant. The pregnancy happened, so now she has to decide if having an abortion or not having an abortion would be worse. You seem to think the first is true. Even if it's true, it's not the government's job to protect us from ourselves.
Also, don't you think people like you, who proclaim how evil abortion is, might be a tiny part of the problem why some people feel such guilt after having one?
True, but irrelevant. The pregnancy happened, so now she has to decide if having an abortion or not having an abortion would be worse. You seem to think the first is true. Even if it's true, it's not the government's job to protect us from ourselves.
Also, don't you think people like you, who proclaim how evil abortion is, might be a tiny part of the problem why some people feel such guilt after having one?
Maybe some people feel guilt because they realize the rammifications of their single action have denied a human being his or her existence. Maybe they realize that they killed one of the only things that would love them unquestionably. Maybe they realize that if they can end a life as easily as they can create it that there is no higher purpose or purpose to life at all. Maybe they feel guilt because they were forced into it because they had no rights as a minor.
That is a lot of "maybes". I cannot see why any person who gets an abortion can blame their guilt on the people who are against them because the abortion itself was their decision. Except in rare cases where the child is killing the mother and they would both end up dead.
Um, no they aren't preposterous. It is an accepted scientific definition of life, it is what every living thing shares. Just because you choose to ignore science doesn't mean that it isn't real.
Underlining your opinion doesn't make it true.
Obviously, fetuses can not regulate their own stability since they do not have completed organs. Homeostasis involves internal stability, ensuring protection for its own organs, etc. You can't just change the definition of the word to suit your side of the debate, lol.
Obviously pregnancy and the womb evolved to provide a supportive environment for potential-birthee development. If you remove food, oxygen and water from a human, they must acquire it. If they cant, they lose their internal balance (homeostasis) and they die. You basically just helped confirm my point that homeostasis is a key indicator of life. "No being is truly homeostatic because they all require inputs" is such an ignorant statement that I find it hard to believe you are serious. Everything requires inputs. Those organisms that lose access to their inputs are no longer homeostatic, then they die. If you lose homeostasis, you die. If you never have homeostasis, you never lived. Is it that hard of a concept to understand? Organisms like a fetus that are incapable of attaining those inputs are not alive.
This and the next few things you posted might be the most ridiculous, ignorant things I have ever read. Do you even know what a stem cell is?
You are comparing apples and oranges. A stem cell is valuable because all of our medical research indicates that they will lead to cures for diseases. You think a fetus is valuable because it could eventually become a person, despite the fact that it is just a fetus and is neither alive nor conscious. Just like with stem cells, the controversy surrounding abortion is not a scientific one. It is entirely invented by people who mistakenly think that fetuses are alive. Please don't mix-up moral confusion with scientific controversy.
The stem cells are not alive, lol. The only people who think it is a moral imperative are people who let their opinions get in the way of facts, usually in the religious sect (souls, etc). The controversy around the word "life" is not a scientific one.
Nobody decries the use of non-embroyic stem cells, they are simply not as useful. When people are forced to use inferior products, there is obviously going to be an outcry. An embryonic stem cell is valuable because medical research indicates a strong possibility that these things can be used to cure previously uncurable diseases. The "lost potential" in the case of stem cells is the millions of people currently living that are going to die because of their disease. Your idea of "lost potential" with a fetus is a misconception that a fetus is a living person, thinking that people are taking away the life of someone who cant defend themself...when in actuality there is no life to be taken.
Right, just like how rape victims usually keep quiet because they really were asking for it. Societal influence has NOTHING to do with anything like that, nope. People who get abortions are sad because its a serious decision. People who are forced to undergo an unwanted pregnancy are worse off.
Wow. Just seriously. Wow.
You really think that forcing a woman to have an unwanted pregnancy is better than letting her have the choice of solving the problem, especially when there are legitimate, effective ways of doing so? You really think that abortions are just errands that sluts run weekly? A majority of people who get abortions are under 25 and teetering on the poverty line. They are people who literally can not afford to have children, and if they do have the child then their path in life is set. Forcing them to bear the weight of a mistake for the next 18 years is criminal.
If you're all so insistent on being against abortion to protect "life", then you should consider being for abortion to protect the lives of people who would otherwise be maimed/murdered by children who were raised in typically poor, single-parent households. See my 2 previous posts in this thread for references.
The father should pay for his crime, not the unborn and unwanted fetus. Does its life have any less value than mine or yours just because it was concieved differently? And the only difference between abortion in rape cases and abortion in any other situation is that the pregnancy was forced. That does not make the fact that a human life hangs in the balance based on the mother's desicion any different. The pregnancy still happens and the fetus is still there and has the same value as any other person.
Is this a joke? I'm glad you anti-abortion guys are finally showing your true colors.
Once again, a fetus is not alive, so its "life" has no value.
Forcing the woman to remember being RAPED every day of her life is obscenely backwards. The fetus is there because the mother was RAPED. It was not consensual. You really want to punish the victim of a rape because she was raped? An unwanted, forced pregnancy is quite the punishment, combined with the fact that she was RAPED already. The woman should not have to endure even more trauma because you feel the need to impose your moral opinions on other people.
And of course, the father is always going to get caught, am I right?
I'd rather have the mother be able to live her life not burdened by an unwanted child than "saving" a technically non-living fetus.
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