Abortion - why not?

azezil

All this talk of abortion, taking a life and so forth but what about ‘the pill’. The pill is does the same thing only at an earlier stage. So why then is taking ‘the pill’ acceptable when aborting the fetus at a later stage is not?

WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?
* In 1981 (April 23-24) a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings on the very question before us here: When does human life begin? Appearing to speak on behalf of the scientific community was a group of internationally-known geneticists and biologists who had the same story to tell, namely, that human life begins at conception - and they told their story with a profound absence of opposing testimony.
Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
* "Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence."
* Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
* Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."
* Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, "I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty ... is not a human being."
* Dr. Richard V. Jaynes: "To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous."
* Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And on the Supreme Court ruling _Roe v. Wade_, "To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion."
* Professor Eugene Diamond: "...either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."

So if we take these testimonials as fact, life begins at the moment of fertilization. So by taking ‘the pill’ you’re taking of a life. We take the lives of countless species all the time without a second thought so why should this be any different? Because it’s a human child? A sentient being? But it’s not sentient at that time, it is in fact nothing more than a pile of cells.

So now if we can agree that taking the life of an unborn child is acceptable at what age does it become unacceptable, and why? Because if becomes sentient? Well when does that happen and how can you know?

PHB

A child is born, to me, when conception occurs. The pill "tricks" the womans body into not realeasing the eggs needed for conception to occur. Therefore the pills is just the same as Condoms.

Unless your talking about the morning after pill?

Xterminator

I assume you are talking about the morning after pill.

This prevents the fertilised egg from attaching itself to the womb, resulting in the egg being flushed out of the system.

(Note this phenomom happens regularly, in nature.)

Also the IUD or Coil works on the same principal. (preventing a fetilsed egg from attaching).

I would like to hear the arguments of those who seek to outlaw such methods of contraception.
Particurlarly the Coil, as it is a chemical free long term solution to preventing unwanted pregnancy, something which those who seek to reduce the no's of those seeking abortion should inherantly support.

X

ykt0di9url7bc3

i wish we could take the Germans stand point on abortion.....

Its available to everyone but once you apply for the procedure, you are given intense pro-life and anti abortion counsiling.
only after the counsiling can still go through with it.

I believe in a lot of things and other people may believe whatever they want to, but to have every choice and still be shown every side is probably the definition of an educated democratic society

Lemming

I agree with SearraD

Having such a level of counselling before you decide to go through with such a serious decision is a very good idea. At the very least it would allow professionals the ability to try and gauge how serious a situation the mother is in (mentally speaking).

bonkey

Or the Swiss approach, where you are given a psychiatric evaluation, where you have to justify *why* you want an abortion, and they make the decision as to whether or not your reasoning is honest and valid.

As a side-note however, I would point out that while the quoted article mentioned there was a "profound absence of opposing testimony", it is clearly not giving the full story. No scientist who argues that life begins at conception could possibly be in favour of research involving fertilised eggs, but they lobbied in favour of it, agreeing on a 2-week deadline as an ethical "safe point", which would clearly be refuting the concept of "human at conception".

I'm sure the pro-choice lobby can also pick and choose experts and studies which show other findings, and I would also point out that the stufy in question dates from 20 years ago - you will probably find a shift in thinking has occurred since then.

The point is that even if we are not sure, we have strong arguments showing that it is *probably* correct to consider it as human life from conception, which then raises the question as to whether or not we should legislate on that basis or not. At the moment, pro-choice does not appear to err on the side of caution, but rather on the side of convenience. It is my own opinion that this is a very dangerous manner to legislate!!!

What truly galls me is that many respects the "natural process" of conception has less protection under the law than similar lab-work. Should the Bush aministration carry forward their plans for bans/restrictions on stem-cell research and its ilk, it will truly become a situation where the lab offers more legal protection than the womb - that life will be classified differently depending on the manner and location of conception. Is it just me, or is this truly hypocritical?

jc

shaw

That psychiatric evaluation method seems like a good solution.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

From a scientific point of view, it's about definitions, plain and simple. All those experts who testified used the standard that fertilization is equivalent to the creation of an organism. However, using the same argument, I could claim that both sperms and eggs (especially eggs) are a dormant form of human life, same as an embryo. Why the moment of fertilization seems to dog a medical mind is beyond me quite frankly. Several obstetricians I've spoken to all agree that roughly at the 6-week stage, the embryo assumes characteristics that are more or less human. Prior to that stage, there is practically no difference in the morphologies of human, whale, snake, avian or even crustacean embryos. They all have similar patterns of development - hence evolution.

From a purely ethical standpoint, there are few reasons why (for example) a woman who's been raped has no right to an abortion. The argument that God willed it to happen is plain lunacy to my ears. Most classical monotheistic religions encourage in sections of holy text- infanticide, selling one's children into slavery and killing them to release them from sin. To turn around and form a vague, faith-based argument centered around a personal and selfish moral objection is unsupportable. If a rational and calculated choice is made by an individual, then why not? It's unbelievably selfish to force one's moral convictions on others, however distasteful the thought is. Empathy is a reciprocal emotion, that purely ethical standpoint holds no water with someone rationally pursuing the choice of abortion.

From a scientific standpoint, it can be argued either way. As I said though, it's a slippery slope defining life at the moment of conception, it conveniently waxes over the fact that very often, a mother's own immune system is very likely to abort the fetus as part of a natural primary immune response. If abortion is 'murder', then shouldn't the mother be charged when this happens? After all, even insane cases are confined after a crime if they had no control over their actions... To legislate in this area is as bonkey says, extremely dangerous. Here's another thought...if a fetus is lost in a miscarriage or forced to be aborted because of negative life style choices the mother makes during pregnancy, should she be charged with negligence? Or assault? Or murder, as some pro-life campaigners want? I don't think that's the way forward.

A controlled system, where a psyciatric evaluation and at least a week's worth of counselling are an essential part of the decision process seems the best way. To deny people a choice that very possibly affects their entire life doesn't seem very ethical to me. It's pandering to a pro-life lobby that presents the same, unchanged and unimaginative arguments time after time. That often uses religion and skewed medical definitions to fit arguments of convenience that put forward their views in a pop-science manner. It is also this same lobby that has most likely discouraged and actively prevented stem-cell research from going ahead on human embryos that would otherwise have been destroyed. They don't seem to object to the actual destruction of the (fertilized) embryos that have been in cold storage, just our experimentation on them.

That makes no sense to me, nor should it to anyone who knows the enormous benefits such research could accrue to those with presently incurable life-threatening and debilitating diseases/disabilities. I mean, if stem cell research progresses to any defined level, blind people might be able to see again, and deaf people hear. Paralysis via spinal tissue injury might be cured. All using a straightforward development of embryonic stem cells, it only takes time and patience to find the correct growth factors, environment, and rigorous trials to test implantation.

It's fairly obvious which side of this argument I stand on, and I cannot see a convincing enough opposing argument. Skewing defintions in favor of a politically viable stance doesn't strike me as the correct approach, but unless the public can be convinced of the enormous benefit that would result to both medical research and social circumstances of individuals, the politicans will just continue to pander to the largest lobby.

Occy

JustHalf

It's pandering to a pro-life lobby that presents the same, unchanged and unimaginative arguments time after time.
What, like don't kill babies?

WhiteWashMan

the choice of the mother is absolute.

i cannot belive how barbaric irish society has become with a referendum trying to reintroduce previous constitutions which have been voted out.
its things like this that make me never want to live in ireland again. a state run by pro-lifers and the catholic church where any sort of forward thinking is frowned upon is not where i want to live.

will ireland actually progress at any stage in to the 20 century, let alone 21st?

bonkey

Originally posted by Bob the Unlucky Octopus
Several obstetricians I've spoken to all agree that roughly at the 6-week stage, the embryo assumes characteristics that are more or less human. Prior to that stage, there is practically no difference in the morphologies of human, whale, snake, avian or even crustacean embryos.

So, in your educated medical opinion (as opposed to my pop-science), would this 6-week point form a reasonable cut-off point - as a reasonable point whereby beforehand we can simply say "its alive", whereas afterwards we could say "its a life" ? I'm not trying to be smarmy, but the distinction of this point is (to me) central to any non-religious argument on the abortion issue.

I recognise that anyone can trot out medical experts to back almost any standpoint - you simply have to look hard enough. So, even if you and I were to agree that 6 weeks was a reasonable point (although I thought organ definition occurred at about 4 weeks), I'm sure others can trot out experts to back anything from "no contraception ever", up as far as "drawn its first breath and had the umbilical cut".

This is the problem - that us pop-scientists can have our opinions shot down by the experts, but the experts themselves cannot form a consensus. This very fact highlights how slippery the slope is. Can we have any faith that a medical expert's opinion in this matter is not coloured by (say) his or her own religious and/or moral beliefs. If we cant have that faith, then it becomes a question of why their faith-influenced educated answer is any more intelligent or valid than a faith-influenced or moral-influenced but less educated answer.

From a purely ethical standpoint, there are few reasons why (for example) a woman who's been raped has no right to an abortion.

This is the case I have the most problem in understanding. If a woman is brought to hospital/police after a rape case, should she not be advised immediately to consider the "morning after pill" - which very few bar the religious zealots have a problem with. Why do we need to wait a significant amount of time to find out that she's pregnant in order to offer her an abortion, when there are other shorter-term approaches (or if there arent, could Occy explain them to me) which are typically not considered abortion.

Yes, you will always have the rare cases where this approach wouldnt cover things, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Would we argue that a woman raped and kept hostage for 3 or 4 months while pregnant has a right to an abortion because of the emotional trauma, despite it being past the point where any form of "legal" abortion would be allowed??? This is the problem that I see - letting the emotions of a specific case override the underlying moral/ethical arguments about the life of the unborn gives rise to a situation where one can easily take the supposed "exceptional case" and reduce it to an absurdity. Would we allow the rape victim an abortion when almost at term - simply because there was no possibility of her getting an abortion previously? If not, then we are arguing that the term of the pregnancy is the more important factor - in which case we should cease with the intellectual dishonesty and stop discussing cases which involve secondary emotive issues such as rape.

The argument that God willed it to happen is plain lunacy to my ears.

Agreed - I believe society has the right (or the imperative even) to define moral laws which apply to everyone, but religion should play no part in this.

It is also this same lobby that has most likely discouraged and actively prevented stem-cell research from going ahead on human embryos that would otherwise have been destroyed. They don't seem to object to the actual destruction of the (fertilized) embryos that have been in cold storage, just our experimentation on them.

As I think I said in some previous thread - I firmly believe that the cutoff point for abortion (if one is agreed upon) should also be defined as the cutoff point for experimentation. If you define abortion legal to 6 weeks, then you can do whatever the hell you like to fertilized embryos's in a lab up to that point. Any differing stance is self-contradictory in my eyes.

That makes no sense to me, nor should it to anyone who knows the enormous benefits such research could accrue to those with presently incurable life-threatening and debilitating diseases/disabilities.

Actually, I think the benefits which stem-cell research could provide are, again, a diversionary secondary issue. It doesnt matter whether its the most potentially incredible research in the history of man, or the most pointless simply carried out by a few crackpots. The fact is that we should not define seperate moral and legal standards for what is effectively the samer thing - a fertilised embryo.

It's fairly obvious which side of this argument I stand on, and I cannot see a convincing enough opposing argument.

Well, unless you can explain to me why your stance is medically correct, and the stance of other docs is incorrect, all I can do is say that I believe the experts in the field cannot reach a consensus. In the absence of such a consensus, I feel obliged to err on the side of caution.

Having said that, I would accept the possibility of abortion being legalised up to the 4 or 6 week period before organ and brain definition, as long as psychiatric evaluation and counselling were included as part of the overall requirements. This would not be "the risght answer" for me, but would be a reasonable and sensitive balance between the various factions.

jc

Biffa Bacon

i cannot belive how barbaric irish society has become with a referendum trying to reintroduce previous constitutions which have been voted out.

You're obviously well-informed on this whole referendum business aren't you?

its things like this that make me never want to live in ireland again. a state run by pro-lifers and the catholic church where any sort of forward thinking is frowned upon is not where i want to live.

Newsflash! Ireland is a democracy. Pro-lifers and the Catholic Church do not run the state.

WhiteWashMan

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon

You're obviously well-informed on this whole referendum business aren't you?

Newsflash! Ireland is a democracy. Pro-lifers and the Catholic Church do not run the state.

ok, please feel free to explain, at length and detail what it really means?

Biffa Bacon

I was just being pedantic. It's an amendment we're voting on, not a constitution.

Giblet

Well it does seem that pro lifers and the church get basically what they want over prochoicers and people who want us to move on from 1950's ireland, what next corperal(?) punishment

WhiteWashMan

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon
I was just being pedantic. It's an amendment we're voting on, not a constitution.

ok, then please feel free to explain to me, at length, and in detail why you are voting yes, and what this means.
and being a pedant, im sure you will give me a good read....

JustHalf

If Ireland is a both run by pro-lifers and the catholic church, then most voters must be pro-life and postively influenced by Catholicism.

Which you can't really argue with and still support a democracy, unless you want to whinge when things don't go your way.

I also fail to see how pro-choice is the more evolved of the two sides, as you seem to insinuate. Want to explain how?

Biffa Bacon

Originally posted by WhiteWashMan


ok, then please feel free to explain to me, at length, and in detail why you are voting yes, and what this means.
and being a pedant, im sure you will give me a good read....

Human life begins at conception.
Therefore abortion involves the destruction of human life.

The right to life is a basic human right.
Therefore abortion is an abuse of human rights.

The law should protect human rights.
Therefore abortion should be prohibited by law.

The threat of suicide cannot be properly evaluated as a real and untreatable condition in any particular case.
Therefore the threat of suicide cannot be allowed as justification for an abortion.

This referendum will remove the right to abortion where there is the threat of suicide.
Therefore I voted Yes to approve the referendum.

WhiteWashMan

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon

Human life begins at conception.
Therefore abortion involves the destruction of human life.

The right to life is a basic human right.
Therefore abortion is an abuse of human rights.

The law should protect human rights.
Therefore abortion should be prohibited by law.

The threat of suicide cannot be properly evaluated as a real and untreatable condition in any particular case.
Therefore the threat of suicide cannot be allowed as justification for an abortion.

This referendum will remove the right to abortion where there is the threat of suicide.
Therefore I voted Yes to approve the referendum.

i dont belive that human life begins at conception.
therefore your arguments mean nothing to me....

JustHalf

It's human. Is it a human "being" is the question.

Thank God I'm a vegetarian. I have the upper hand when people act smart and say "surely then, if you truly believe what you are saying, then you shouldn't eat animals?"

logic1

Originally posted by JustHalf
It's human. Is it a human "being" is the question.

Thank God I'm a vegetarian. I have the upper hand when people act smart and say "surely then, if you truly believe what you are saying, then you shouldn't eat animals?"

Do you eat eggs? Same as eating a foetus... or no wait.. same as killing a foetus...

.logic.

bonkey

Originally posted by logic1
Do you eat eggs? Same as eating a foetus... or no wait.. same as killing a foetus...

Only if the egg were fertilized, which most eggs you buy arent, I believe?

jc

Lemming

Originally posted by Biffa Bacon
This referendum will remove the right to abortion where there is the threat of suicide.
Therefore I voted Yes to approve the referendum.

The irony of voting yes is that you are NOT protecting the unborn.

If the mother commits suicide, then by default, the foetus will also die. Therefore you are letting one life, and one *possible* life die.

Therefore, choose the lesser of two evils. Let one die in the hope of saving the other, or let both die?

JustHalf

Guess what, Lemming!

It's possible to stop a suicidal person from killing themselves in ways other than abortion!!!

Lemming

Originally posted by JustHalf
Guess what, Lemming!

It's possible to stop a suicidal person from killing themselves in ways other than abortion!!!

Really?? Do indulge me as to how! What are you gonna do? Lock them up in a padded cell for 9 months? On what charge? They've not broken any laws? YOu're just gonna have them banged away like a criminal?

JustHalf

They could be sent to counselling. HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING?

What's with the barbarism? And anyway, isn't being locked up for 9 months better than being dead forever?

And if they are going to commit a crime, isn't it our duty to try and prevent them?

Jeez, some people. Just because someone thinks we shouldn't allow abortions it automatically means we want to lock people up as a first resort?

TroutMan

I don't think abortion is wrong. An embryo in early term is a set of chemical reactions. It doesn't care if it lives or dies. It's alive in the animal sense of the word, but not really human. Not conscious, no 'personality', no aspirations. Embryos don't care about abortions, any more than slugs care about the lack of constitutional protection for slugs.

Peter Singer is a favourite philosopher of mine who works in ethics and thinks much like me (ok, I think like him):

http://www.cwfa.org/library/life/1999-10-07_christ-hospital.shtml

“A ‘person’ is a being who is capable of anticipating a future, having wants and desires for the future, which are cut off, thwarted, if that person is killed … Newborn babies have no sense of their own existence over time … Killing a newborn baby—whether able-bodied or not—I think, is never equivalent to killing a being who wants to go on living.”

Suffering is a bad thing. If a foetus can feel pain, any pain should be minimized, just as cows should be killed as humanely as possible. Inflicting pain on a non-sentient creature is worse than killing it.

I dunno when a foetus becomes a person by my definition. Could even be after birth.

two other points; the use of shock imagery by the ageing pro-lifers is a bit tasteless and besides the point. I always get the impression that if the foetus was given a nice funeral with velvet curtains, they'd (the pro-lifers) lose a lot of wind from their sails.

And---I thought it bad of the referendum committee to refer always to the 'threat' of suicide, as if it was a ploy. I voted on the basis of the danger of suicide.

(please don't use too many capitals or rhetorical question marks if you chose to reply)

JustHalf

Originally posted by TroutMan
Inflicting pain on a non-sentient creature is worse than killing it.

Er...

This doesn't make any sense. Care to elaborate why this is the case?

Biffa Bacon

An embryo in early term is a set of chemical reactions.

Either you are totally ignorant of embryonic biology or you are being deliberately disingenuous.

I dunno when a foetus becomes a person by my definition. Could even be after birth.

Perhaps then your definition is not a very good one?

two other points; the use of shock imagery by the ageing pro-lifers is a bit tasteless and besides the point.

Are you afraid of the truth? Would you rather not be confronted with it?

Sharkey

Originally posted by azezil
All this talk of abortion, taking a life and so forth but what about ‘the pill’. The pill is does the same thing only at an earlier stage. So why then is taking ‘the pill’ acceptable when aborting the fetus at a later stage is not?

Respectfully, the pill doesn't do the same thing. The pill fools a woman's body into thinking that it is pregnant and not producing any eggs whatsoever. No eggs, no fertilizaed eggs.

Sharkey

Originally posted by Bob the Unlucky Octopus

... It's pandering to a pro-life lobby that presents the same, unchanged and unimaginative arguments time after time. That often uses religion and skewed medical definitions to fit arguments of convenience that put forward their views in a pop-science manner ...

Occy

I am nor particuarly religious. I will be a father for the first time in two months.

At six weeks, I got to hear my daughter's heartbeat.

At twelve weeks, I saw a sonogram of my daughter in my wife's womb. I saw my daughtr turn over, move about, try to such her thumb. She was very human in all respects.

The other day, my wife had her portable computer on her stomach typing away. My daughter actually kicked so hard as to knock the computer off my wife's stomach. Apparently, she didn't like the noise and heat generated by the computer.

I simply say to all those people who think an unborn child is not human, go see a sonogram first -- I suspect that the majority of you will change your minds.

DadaKopf

Is consciousness not the most reasonable point to disallow abortion? I don't mean conscious meaning 'awake' but to denote the presence of mental processes?

Until a certain stage, the foetus is a conglomeration of chemicals, cells, blastomeres etc but it's the development of the brain stem that composes the most basic elements of human consciousness?

If consciousness is the measure of "human being", then this seems like a convincing cut off point to disallow abortion.

Occy knows a lot more of this medical stuff than any of us, so maybe Occy could explain the stages of the development of the nervous system and the development of consciousness in medical terms?

JustHalf

No-one really knows how conciousness develops, DadaKopf.

However, conciousness has only been proved to exist a few months after birth. Read up on the mirror-dot test.

So, you need to allow after-birth abortions, if you're going to use conciousness as a cut-off point.

DadaKopf

Sure, in all the lectures I've attended on the Q. of consciousness, we still don't exactly know what it is and how it is.

Nevertheless, when we look at how the medical profession determines death of a patient, many but by no means all see the death of the brain stem as the death of the patient.

The brain stem, I think, is like the communications node between the brain and the body's nervous system and without it, no organs can function. This is why I was asking Occy if he knows whether the brain stem is essential to cognitive processes or whether the brain continues living and only dies because of oxygen starvation because the organs cease working.

Right, Just Half, looks like we're back to square one .

TroutMan

so I said:

Inflicting pain on a non-sentient creature is worse than killing it.

and I stand by it. For example, if you have a cow, and you kill it painlessly (get some US preachers to fly over and administer NO2 or whatever), I don't see the harm, especially if there's a purpose, e.g. you're going to eat it. If you have a cow, and you flay it alive and grate the exposed flesh with a grater for a week, the cow suffers and that is a bad thing. The a priori badness of suffering is where the buck stops for me; I can't really explain why I think it's bad.

and I said

An embryo in early term is a set of chemical reactions.

Well, I think life is chemical reactions. A cat is, as far as I can see, chemical reactions. A person is chemical reactions, but they (the reactions) have given rise to a conscious entity that I can interact with.

and

I dunno when a foetus becomes a person by my definition. Could even be after birth.

which, it is thought, is not a good definition. But I stand by it. Consciousness (which is what matters to me) is not something you're born with. It emerges through interaction with the environment, brain development, etc. It's not a binary on / off thing; I'd have to allow for lesser consciousness in chimps, dolphins etc. Personhood is not a binary state for me either; it develops. But --- and I have to be tasteless here --- a mentally handicapped person is less of a person than someone with full faculties. The richness of interaction and level of awareness is less. Unpleasant but the case, as far as I can see.


When I said that the use of shock imagery by the ageing pro-lifers is a bit tasteless and besides the point, JustHalf asked 'Are you afraid of the truth? Would you rather not be with confronted it?'

But the gruesome pictures are not the relevent truth; birth looks a bit of a mess too. Some of the stories I've heard, about late-term abortions crawling around in the bin bag, are abhorrent. But abortion is killing a baby, not dumping a mutilated baby in a bin bag. While there's probably no way to make abortion look pleasant, and you wouldn't want to, the fact that it looks a bit gruesome is not the problem.

The issues of personhood, consciousness, etc, are pretty difficult, and I'm more interested in discussing them than forcing views down throats. From an atheist / rationalist point of view, the only thing I can see that separates people from other things is their high degree of introspection, self awareness, etc. The evidence that a complicated synaptic network and exposure to a rich environment, are prerequisites for the development of this stuff, is plentiful. A foetus doesn't display these traits, doesn't meet the prerequisites, and so isn't a person in my view.

That mirror dot test is interesting, though I found nothing on tests on babies. However, you don't 'need to allow abortions after birth' just because the baby isn't conscious; you don't need to have a definite cut off criterion at all (and I doubt such distinction occur in nature). I'd argue that abortion is an invasive procedure, very affecting of the mother, and on those grounds should be taken seriously and done in early term (to avoid complications for the mother).

That said, killing a pre-conscious baby is still more a crime against the parents than the baby, as far as I can see. The baby doesn't care.

JustHalf

Er, I didn't say that thing about the truth. I couldn't be arsed quoting it.

It's pretty obvious that if you define consciousness as the cut-off point for abortions, and conciousness only arises a few months after birth, then you have to allow "abortions" after birth.

Typedef

Originally posted by Bob the Unlucky Octopus
From a scientific point of view, it's about definitions, plain and simple. All those experts who testified used the standard that fertilization is equivalent to the creation of an organism. However, using the same argument, I could claim that both sperms and eggs (especially eggs) are a dormant form of human life, same as an embryo.

Occy

Which is not an invalid argument, but it is skewed, once the sperm and egg combine, the resultant organism is genetically a concatonation of the two progenitor organism's genes and it is at this point that the resultant zygote is identifiable at the level of dna as a seperate and distinct human being.

Funnily enough, if one finds such things funny, the fertilised embryo resembles human life sufficiently to be harvested for it's stem cells, but not sufficiently to be afforded the supposed protection and inalienable rights that are presumed 'universal' to humans no matter the reality of practice.

Typedef

Originally posted by JustHalf
Er, I didn't say that thing about the truth. I couldn't be arsed quoting it.

It's pretty obvious that if you define consciousness as the cut-off point for abortions, and conciousness only arises a few months after birth, then you have to allow "abortions" after birth.

Or indeed abortions of those deemed to be of 'lesser consciousness'. I wonder what set of infallable moral 'ethics' endow a person with sufficient knowledge of what defines a human being, to be so sure and capable of saying when someone or something is and is not human. It is legal to experiment on a chipanzee that can for example communicate via sign language (something I disagree with) while it is totaly illegal to experiment on the mentally retarded humans of this society, why, by the logic that espouses human life as a function of an organism's awarness it should be pertty clear that experimentation on humans of lesser intellegence than a chimpanzee is merely experimentation on non-humans 'untermenchen' if you will, so why is it not allowed?

I'll tell you why, your species dictates your access to human rights in this structure we ambigiously call society and simply put, society finds it easy to disenfranchise the unborn of their civil and human rights, because the unborn are silent and completely unaware of the debate and the danger posed to them by that debate, but a person who lives and interacts in the world is tangable and is not so easy to simply reduce to a set of arguments and counter arguments and in practice logic tells us such puritanical theorisation negates the inclusion of real world experience in whatever logical permis governs the formulation of our opinions. That is why I say, it becomes extremeley easy to reduce the stature of a section of society that is never seen, is never heard from and cannot defend itself namely in the unborn.
People seek to discredit 'Pro-Lifers' as most antagonists do with each other in just about any arena of human interaction one might mention, but the fact remains that if consciousness is the criteria used for 'human life' then there exist on this planet cats, dogs and chimpanzees that have more right to human rights then some of our own species.

Therefore human rights as they are now ascribed are rights derived by your member species, and the concept that gives me most difficulty is the ascription of access to those rights based on the percieved expediancy of yours, or in other words, I find difficulty with the concept that your 'Right to Life' if one subscribes to such a notion can be diminished by a notion called a 'Right to Choose' wether or not you should be gestating an undeveloped human life.

I do accept that you can't say to someone 'Give up your life for that person there', that is simply stupid. Similarly I accept that you can say 'You must inconvienance yourself for (n) months because this is not a case of life or death for you, but is a case of life or death for your undeveloped child'. I find that the case of life or death will always supercede choice in a very asimovian way and as I have already persented I do believe that a person's species dictates right and that therefore the physical manifestation of that person be it 'deformed' or 'undeveloped' is equivalent as both are simply different types of human and I would not persume to begin second guessing the validity of that member of my species claim to humanity.

lightman, what a uh, suprise

TroutMan

It's pretty obvious that if you define consciousness as the cut-off point for abortions, and conciousness only arises a few months after birth, then you have to allow "abortions" after birth.

Nope, not if you agree, as I tried to say above, that consciousness doesn't 'switch on' suddeny, but emerges slowly, and you have different degrees of consciousnes. I'm pretty sure that a newly conceived foetus is not conscious; it's too simple an organism. I'm pretty sure that a baby that can 'pass' the mirror dot test is conscious. It's hard to say much about what goes on in between, but I think you can safely say that consciousness is not present in the first month. So I'd suggest one month as a safe cut off.

JustHalf

Gosh, I wish my house was built to such exact specifications.

Excuse me while I piss out of my window into the toilet, and then go to bed on my roof.

And you are either self-aware or you aren't. You can't be kind-of self-aware. That doesn't make sense.

amp

Bored of arguing about abortion except to say how amazed I am to find the wealth of morons on the boards lately and how quickly the topic of abortion reveals them.

meglome

Something to consider...

At the genetic level, we are 98% the same as chimps and 79% gorillas (and 50% the same as bananas for that matter). So as human babies are more reliant on their parents than a baby gorilla and for a longer time; and so Gorillas may be considered more intelligent at birth... does this mean our moral Gestapo are off to save the apes? Just wondering?



BTW. I agree totally with amp

Sand

Me three. People who feel strongly about Abortion (either side) usually get bogged down into the "definition of life, when it being " thing. After a thread lasting 13 pages in politics, and a second one on the actual referendum result, and theyre quickly whacking up another 3 here its quite obvious they feel quite passionate about it. With this "when does life being" thing though they might as well argue over what shade of white snow is.

TroutMan

<sighs>

all right, all right, moronic moral gestapo shuffling off. But I will just say a few things...

JustHalf says

And you are either self-aware or you aren't. You can't be kind-of self-aware. That doesn't make sense.

so (s)he has to believe either that a foetus is self aware from conception, or that at some point self awareness suddenly switches on like a light. This seems a fantastic supposition to me. I'm with sand in that believing that the start of personhood can't be defined. But while arguing over what shade of white snow is is futile, it's pretty obvious when one thing is black and one white.

Secondly, while I am in favour of early term abortion, my interest is more to get some definite ideas on personhood than to promote a nazi-style eugenics programme. People and animals are not ascribed rights in nature; rights are a political construct. If you want universal rights, you need some kind of basis for them. It seems to me that self-awareness is the most obvious choice; this ascribes rights to people, presumably chimps, maybe dolphins, etc. It's not arbitrary or specist, and you can defend it by saying: well, X wants to be alive (beyond a simple self preservation instinct). An early term foetus doesn't want to be alive. It doesn't care. Of course, by this definition, the right to life doesn't extend to cows, slugs, celery, bactira, virii... lower life forms. Makes sense to me.

I think the right to freedom of suffering should be extensive. But that's another story.

Lastly, as well as the various rationalisations offered above, one reason I favour abortion is experience of what life can be like for people who might have been aborted. I know a family with a 23 year old son, severely disabled since before birth.

Doctors suggested that the boy's life-sustaining medication be discontinued at about 18 months, as it was apparent that the quality of life would be abysmal. Naturally, the parents declined.

The son is now self aware, and unremittingly miserable. He cries for his plight unless kept on steadily increasing doses of methadone. When he's on methadone, he just dribbles unhappily. The financial and emotional strain, and exhaustion, that this has led to for the parents is proving very hard for them to bear, and I think the quality of life for all concerned would be much better had they terminated the pregnancy. I'm not suggesting that there should have been mandatory abortion (the interpretation some here may read), but I think they should have had the choice.

bonkey

Originally posted by TroutMan
The financial and emotional strain, and exhaustion, that this has led to for the parents is proving very hard for them to bear, and I think the quality of life for all concerned would be much better had they terminated the pregnancy. I'm not suggesting that there should have been mandatory abortion (the interpretation some here may read), but I think they should have had the choice.

This is yet another emotive but irrelevant side-issue.

AS Sand rightly pointed out, people get bogged down in the unswerable - the discussion of the definition of human life. Unfortuately, its the only issue which matters in the discussion.

Take the argument TroutMan espoused above - that the parents should have the right to decide about their son's life. Lets look at this from a very simple point of view :

1) If the unborn is classified as human life, then TroutMan is arguiong in favour of euthenasia, not abortion. It is a seperate discussion, and nothing to do with abortion. His logic would also extend beyond birth, and would be equally valid today as it was before birth.

2) If the unborn is not classified as human life, then TroutMan's argument is unnecessary. We are not talking about human life, therefore there is no problem.

There is no other issue - only misdirecting smoke and mirrors by people who refuse to acknowledge (or who do not see) that the issue of defining the extent of our humanity is the only issue which can ever be relevant to the discussion while we have any form of moral structure which holds human life in the highest regard.

Any other argument is a side issue, which is why we get dragged back to this central issue time after time after time.

The self-awareness question is an interesting one on this front, but its not everything. We normally recognise the right to life of mentally handicapped who would fail any awareness test, but only up to certain limits.

The right to life is full of contradictions. We mostly outlaw euthenasia, but at the same time allow dependants to make decisions about "pulling the plug" on what are seen as lost cases on life-support. We have differing standards on abortion and stem-cell research using fertilised eggs. We give the newborn the right to life, but sometimes allow its parents to make the decision to "stop fighting" in the case of premies with complications. Hell, many judicial systems have at least some provision for capital punishment - which means that your right to life is less sacrosanct than other of your statutory rights!

In short, the sacrosanct right to life is a myth. There is no universal right to life unless it falls withing convenient borders where there are no tough decisions to be made. Once we fall into any of those areas, then dissension sets in, and people will argue till the cows come home.

jc

MrPudding

Originally posted by JustHalf
Guess what, Lemming!

It's possible to stop a suicidal person from killing themselves in ways other than abortion!!!

Here’s a scenario for you JustHalf

A young single woman is raped, this effects her, funnily enough, in a bad way. She doesn't tell anyone, she is too embarrassed, what if people think she was asking for it? She just tries to put it behind her and get on with her life. But it's not that easy. Keeping it bottled up inside takes it's toll, but hey, she’s surviving. Then she realizes her period is late, but she thinks no I’ll be OK, I’ll just wait a bit. Another week and still no period, not good. Better get a pregnancy test. What do you know she is going to have the B*****d child of the scumbag who raped her. Well now she can’t be happy with that. What should she do, she isn’t stupid, she sits down and has a good think. “ What are my options?” Well, you could take the child to term, for nine months every time you look at yourself in the mirror and see your growing bump you can think of the animal who impregnated you against your will. You could feel the hatred for that thing in your belly growing as it grows, you may not see it as a life or a baby just as a constant reminder of the rape. “Hmmmm don’t like that option I’d rather die than have to go through that. I don’t think I could deal with that every day for 9 months surely there is another option.” What do you mean you don’t like that option? You don’t have another option. Remember the referendum? (work with me here… if the yes camp won) The pro-lifers think that the “life” of the B*****d spawn of your rapist, which is currently just a bunch of cells and may or may not be considered life depending on who you talk to, is more important than yours. So she’s thinking, “I’ve been raped and I’m now pregnant. I don’t want this baby, I can’t have this baby I F**king hate this baby and all it’s stands for.” Remember now she has been through a very harrowing experience, maybe she isn’t thinking straight suicide is looking pretty good right now. So it’s off to the shopping center, into the off license, nice bottle of wine, into boots for the maximum amount of any kind of pill and then may a few more places to buy more. Then it’s home to run a nice warm bath, get in the bath and wash all those pills down with your favorite wine and then a nice big slash down one of your wrists and relax. Things don’t seem so bad now. She misses work the next day, no answer on the phone friend and family get worried. Someone eventually kicks the door down, the bath is long cold.

Tell me JustHalf, how would you save that girl and the baby?

TroutMan

Quite. Another way to look at it, in the wider sense of abortion, is that girls will try to kill their own babies with a coat hanger. The reality of this imperfect world is that people in a desperate situation resort to desperate measures; you can offer them counselling and hospital care (and maybe change their minds), or leave them to their own injurious devices. No legislation will stop abortion altogether; it'll only affect the circumstances.

JustHalf

Originally posted by MrEnvy
Tell me JustHalf, how would you save that girl and the baby?

If one of my friends got pregnant, I'd support her as much as she needed and I could give. I'd make sure she felt secure, and that she could lean on me. If she needed money for treatment or care, I'd help out as much as I could. It doesn't matter who the father is, I've got a duty to look after my friend.

I'm actually a great guy. I rule.

JustHalf

Originally posted by TroutMan
Quite. Another way to look at it, in the wider sense of abortion, is that girls will try to kill their own babies with a coat hanger. The reality of this imperfect world is that people in a desperate situation resort to desperate measures; you can offer them counselling and hospital care (and maybe change their minds), or leave them to their own injurious devices. No legislation will stop abortion altogether; it'll only affect the circumstances.

I'd be amazed if you believe that the same amount of abortions will take place (comparing coat hanger to surgical).

Lemming

Originally posted by JustHalf
If one of my friends got pregnant, I'd support her as much as she needed and I could give. I'd make sure she felt secure, and that she could lean on me. If she needed money for treatment or care, I'd help out as much as I could. It doesn't matter who the father is, I've got a duty to look after my friend.

JustHalf. Whilst I absolutely applaud you for being prepared to stick out for a friend, it still isn't enough (bear with me here) to simply say that. Yes its great to have the support of your friends, etc.

BUT ...

A) Your friend's just been raped/molested/insert whatever-horrifying-ordeal-you-can-think-of-here. That is doing things to her mind that not even you nor I can see or even comprehend. She may know that people are there for her, but that doesn't stop her feeling utterly alone.

You don't have to live with the consequences of some Jock-d*cka*s-c*cksucking-w*nker's need to get his fill for the rest iof your life. She will. Puppies aren't just for Xmas, and neither are babies.

C) What happens when you have to start spending time elsewhere and leave her to her own devices?

Believe me, I would be there too for any of my friends in that circumstance, but ultimately you can only hold a torch in the dark for them. They're the ones that have got to find their footing and walk the path.

MrPudding

Originally posted by JustHalf
If one of my friends got pregnant, I'd support her as much as she needed and I could give. I'd make sure she felt secure, and that she could lean on me. If she needed money for treatment or care, I'd help out as much as I could. It doesn't matter who the father is, I've got a duty to look after my friend.

I'm actually a great guy. I rule.

This is very noble and I'm sure there isn't a single person on these boards who thinks they would behave any differently. My point is that if you don't know there is a problem in the first place how can you help?