This is a good point that nobody on the pro-life side will consider because they're arguing this from a moralist and utopian perspective. Meanwhile, the pro-choice people will say the argument begins and ends with the woman's right to have an abortion if she deems fit. My pragmatic opinion is that making abortion illegal is more trouble than it's worth.
I've never really got how ”legalise a thing because a thing will always happen” is a good argument. It strikes me as saying ”let's legalise theft, because muggers and burglars will always exist”.
You might have a point here, if objects could be spontaneously stolen by nobody in particular in the same way that pregnancies will spontaneously miscarry. For me, though, I'm not particularly bothered by a woman chemically inducing a miscarriage(which is what a lot of abortions actually are) that has a decent chance of happening anyway.
Abortions also sometimes happen because the fetus died but isn't naturally being aborted (or the woman doesn't want to wait around for her body to naturally expell rotting dead fetus and uterus goo). It's still considered an abortion even if the fetus is already dead, and its performed the exact same way. That's why women have died from sepsis and shit in countries with extreme abortion bans that dont allow it even if the mothers life is in danger.
I don't get this shit, it's an incredible simplification of what is actually happening. I mean even conception itself is not a black and white event. Does conception occur the moment the sperm touches the egg? Once the sperm has drilled in? Once the egg embeds itself? Point I'm making is that there is no light switch moment when any of this happens, let alone when you can call it a life. The start of life is a process, not a line in the sand. There's a definite point where something is a life (capable of surviving outside the womb) and one where it isn't (sperm and egg), anyone who claims there is a specific point in between those points where you can call it a life is full of shit. It's just one long transition process.
Imagine wanting a child rape and incest victim to suffer because of your religious fee fees.
Suffering is a "fee fee." Morality is not.
It is logically necessary for there to be a line in the sand. There is one instant where the human doesn't exist, and another where it does. We can quibble over where that instant is, but it has to exist somewhere.
All humans have been endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
At the moment of fertilization.
Is a fetus in its seventh month not a life just because it can't survive outside the womb in all likelihood? What about newborns that die minutes after birth? Were they not lives, despite the fact that they didn't survive outside the womb?
Sure it is-- it's why we punish for murder, and why we have to dehumanize in order to justify murder. Human life is certainly special-- if you kill someone, you can't un-kill them, and that person will never exist alive ever again.
And you have none of those things when you're in a coma. That doesn't make you any less living or human, but what would accomplish that is someone stabbing you to death while you're in said coma.
Your dead skin would never become a human being. Also, it's not alive.
Unlike your dead skin.
Yeah, but not only is a diamond produced from coal under specific, exacting conditions, coal isn't a human being-- it isn't even alive, so the comparison is poor.
Why? Because you're squeamish about it? You can't make this expansive conversation about how fetuses are hardly human because they haven't qualities they're well on their way to developing/qualities that can be robbed from an individual, and even human life doesn't have inherent sacredness and then say that we should limit abortion to early term subjects. The gravity of abortion, regardless of whether you have a traditional pro-life or pro-choice perspective otherwise, is originally derived from the understanding that the fetus is a human being.
Imagine continuing to use this bullshit rhetorical sleight of hand after being exposed.
None of this has the slightest relevance or makes the slightest difference so I don't see why you guys keep saying it like it's supposed to mean anything to us. They aren't called personality rights, or thought rights, or desire rights, or emotion rights. An absence of one or even all of these things has no bearing on your rights.
An already conceived child doesn't have a "potential" life ahead of it. It's not a possibility, it's an inevitability. It already has its future laid out before it. That future is what will happen to it if no one intercedes to change its future. This is commonly referred to as "the natural course of events," and it is something atheists have a great deal of trouble with. Atheist worldview views the present as the only real moment. Christians tend to view all of time as existent, just not in the same way.
This is the least coherent position on abortion possible. You can think it's not wrong at all, or you can think it's wrong. "It's wrong, but we should so it anyway" is straight up evil.
Not it isn't. It's legally convenient but there does not need to be a line in the sand, and frankly reductive thinking like this is poisonous to proper dialogue. It is a gray transition, period.
Autism.
The entire point of this debate is define what constitutes a human and when human-hood begins. You're just begging the question. Those qualities I listed are considered by some to be cornerstones of humanity, and their absence would be evidence of lack humanity/personhood. That's why I listed them, I'm making the case for the other side. Simply repeating "it is a human" isn't an argument.
It's logically necessary. If something's existence is temporal and we know there is a state where it did not exist and a state where it exists, there must necessarily be some point in time where it changed from state A to state B. Even if that change is a slow process, there must be some point in the process where it is A, and at the next infinitesimal moment in time, it is B. This is not debatable. It's just how reality works. A thing can't exist and not exist, it's a binary. At all points in time either you existed or you didn't, and there are exactly two specific instants in time where that state changes.
>referring to the most legitimate moral philosophy in human history as autism
Does that "some" include anyone you're talking to?
You should be less concerned with who you're making your case for and more concerned with who you're making it to. Just saying "BUT OTHER PEOPLE SEE IT DIFFERENT" isn't the slam dunk compelling argument you guys think it is.
There's no such thing, that is the point I was trying to make. There is no line in the sand here.
I believe 7 months can survive, at least with a bit of assistance. And a baby the dies shortly after being born could theoretically survive but was sick, an infant at that stage is not intrinsically dependent to survive. But this is all semantics anyway, the point I was making is that there are certain points in development where there is no debate about it being a life. I think everyone can agree a newborn is a life, maybe except for some exceptionally demented individuals.
MOST human life is considered special. No one would cry if a school shooter gets strangled to death. People care less if not at all if a human that's already brain dead dies. What I'm getting at is that there is more than just simply being human to be valued, some level of moral/cognitive capability is what makes us special. A human that lacks those is not special like the rest of us.
This is a interesting point, and is precisely why I keep hammering that this discussion is more gray than people are acknowledging. I'd counter by saying that when you are in a coma, you have the hardware for those mental faculties, they're just in sleep mode.
I'm don't normally like bringing up definitions, but I'm going to to illustrate a point. Most definitions of life have a clause about being self sustaining. It's why viruses aren't considered life. I'm not arguing that these definitions make me right, cause most appealing to definitions is gay. But what I am saying is that by some standards the fetus and the dead skin are effectively the same, neither are alive. A fetus technically being alive or not really does not matter to me, I kill a lot of life every day. I only care if it is a person.
I think the comparison is appropriate for I'm trying to convey. A fetus being a full blow human one day is a weird argument to me. I don't act upon other things as though they are what they will become.
I'm not squeamish about it, or really much of anything. I hate when people do that because it's degenerate, it conveys they are irresponsible and don't take life changing choices seriously. It is a serious decision that alters the course of your life, that is the gravity of the choice.
This is literally just gibberish and based on nothing.
You referenced both the declaration of independence and god in what is essentially a question of what makes a human. It was unprompted, unrelated, and pretty fucking autistic. I'm not motte and baily'ing you, I just have nothing to so to a random line pulled out of your ass.
I don't know how to convey my point any simpler.
That's impossible.
Any rational person has to recognize that the point when a thing begins is when it begins, not when it reaches some stage of development.
If that happens while he's killing people, it's self defense and not murder. If it's afterward, and without due process of law to charge him for his school shooting, it's murder. That would be wrong.
Yes, we understand what you're getting at. It's just that what you're getting at is false.
This is an extremely outlandish position and yet you present it like it's just a given that everyone on earth would obviously agree with. No, some level of cognitive or moral capacity is not what makes us special. Being human is. Dumb people are human. Sleeping people are human. Fetuses are human. You don't acquire rights through intelligence or morality. They are endowed upon humans by our creator.
A corpse has the same hardware. It's obviously not the "hardware." Also, that language reveals a very materialistic view of human beings as simply robots.
This is not an argument. "Standards exist where you are wrong," is not an argument. Through critical theory a standard can be constructed to make anything wrong in its context. What are those standards, and are those the right standards to use? A vague appeal to "But people somewhere might disagree!" is extremely retarded, please stop trying it.
"full blown human" is a subset of human. It is an attached adjective, "full blown." If we remove that adjective, and make the fetus not, "full blown," what are we left with?
Those are essential tools for answering that question, particularly with respect to American law.
If we are talking about human rights, which we are, it is extremely related.
Other people's perspectives are essential so that we can examine them to see if they are better perspectives than ours. Ultimately we have to come to a final perspective when we make a decision. Simply saying "some people somewhere disagree, so how can you think that?" is not an argument.
It is immoral to force a 13 year old who was impregnated by her grandfather to stay pregnant.
Nobody was "exposed", you fucking autist.
