Question to my fellow pro-lifers on the killing of abortion doctors

[Mursilis]

If you oppose abortion, consider the fact that abortion is not murder because a personality cannot possibly exist inside of the fetus.

Define this term "personality" which you claim grants us our humanness.

 

[DesiPower]

Let me help you.

It has human form--but it doesn't have a developed human brain nor a human-level consciousness (if it is even conscious at all).

You eat meat, right? What about those poor animals that are slaughtered for food (or run down by automobiles)? They have more highly developed brains and personalities than a 12 week old fetus. In other words--there isn't a person in there. Even a newborn only has the consciousness of an animal or less and not a human-level personality.

If we can justify killing animals for food or driving vehicles (knowing that we might kill animals that run across the road), then surely killing a fetus for huge economic reasons must be justifiable.

I hope that helps.

(If you oppose abortion, this isn't an argument in favor of abortion. I'm just trying to help a guy who supports abortion in the very early stages recognize that it's not as bad at some later stages.)

I am a non-vegetarian not a cannibal. There is a huge difference, we are omnivorous animals, we still have a set of canine teeth.
Secondly, some of these fetuses are alive and can move and even cry, I hope never in you life would you have to hold a human fetus that moving and crying and know that's its gonna die in a few minutes and there's nothing you can do, its not yet capable of accepting external food. and God forbid if that day comes, believe me you wont be the same person anymore, especially if you are a father (or mother).

***
Sorry to sound like a pro-lifer, I am definitely not one, but at the same time late term abortion and ending any pregnancy more than 4 months old is very troubling.

 

[Mursilis]

Murder isn't an elective medical procedure.

What if a doctor's involved? Are you saying it can't be murder if a doctor's involved?

 

[Moonbeam]

Okay then moonie, when do you think a human being becomes a human being?

When they become consciously aware that the belief in absolutes leads to irreconcilable paradoxes like the absolute belief that life begins at conception is in total contradiction with the absolute right of women to have sovereignty over their bodies, that, in short, absolutes are rooted in feelings that are irrational. We are wolf and sheep and cabbage and require effort and consciousness to cross a river.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Based on your logic, who gets to decide who is right? Your moral values? Mine? Sheik Ahmad Abudullah? Oh, that's right, we as a society have a framework for deciding such things. We make laws, and we can change them to reflect our views. And, we elect people and they make decisions (such as when to go to war) that should reflect our views. Imagine that!

I'm not talking about the laws. A law can either be good or bad, moral or immoral. I'm talking about what the laws should be--about what is good and bad, moral and immoral. (Once that has been determined, figuring out what the laws should be is trivial.)

Based on your logic, who gets to decide who is right? Your moral values?

Laws aren't what make something good or bad.

Who decides what is right? You need to have a philosophy and a standard of value to figure that out. In my view, those things that further or improve human happiness and well-being without forcibly reducing the happiness or well-being of other people is what's good.

 

[Mursilis]

In my view, those things that further or improve human happiness and well-being without forcibly reducing the happiness or well-being of other people is what's good.

A fair start, but ambiguous as all heck.

 

[Moonbeam]

In nine months, do proto-viruses become infants? Do they look like fetuses on sonograms?

They look alike genetically as they share tons of the same genes.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think it would also be instructive for pro-abortion folk to witness a partial birth abortion or suction abortion first hand. Perhaps you would be interested in standing bedside with abortion survivors who are routinely refused any medical treatment watching them suffer until they eventually die. And for those that live...well you can take that opportunity to tell that you thought their life was worthless.

There are many...you can start with a 'candy apple baby' named Gianna Jessen.

"My name is Gianna Jessen... I was aborted, and I did not die. My biological mother was 7 months pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood in southern California, and they advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.

A saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mother's womb. The baby then gulps the solution. It burns the baby inside and out, and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.

This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE... in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me the abortionist was not yet on duty and had me transferred to the hospital.

I should be blind, burned... I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion I live with cerebral palsy.

When I was diagnosed with this, all I could do was lie there. They said that was all I would ever do! Through prayer and hard work by my foster mother, I was walking at age 3 ½ with the help of a walker and leg braces. At that time I was also adopted into a wonderful family. Today I am left only with a slight limp. I no longer have need of a walker or leg braces.

...Death did not prevail over me... and I am so thankful!"

...and she was one of the "lucky" ones.

You're just saying that because you weren't aborted. Had you been you wouldn't give a fig.

 

[QuantumPion]

No but what this notion of a fertilized embryo being a citizen logically means is almost every parent has killed multiple "babies" when trying to start a family

Does that sound right to you? Because I refuse to believe I had to let a couple of my "kids" die to have a family.

Well technically I guess that is true. But the development of a fetus is risky, sort of like childbirth and childhood was before modern medicine. Would you say that families "killed" 50% of their children back in the middle ages when the infant mortality rate was that high? Again I guess you could technically make that claim but we are just playing semantics here. And besides, the fact that the "fetus mortality rate" is high is immaterial to the question of whether it is justified to intentionally end that life.

If the law says I can be charged with reckless endagerment/manslaughter for leaving my 5 month old in a place with a high likelihood of death, like a hot car and you want the law to say that a fertilized embryo = a 5 month old then the same charges would apply for putting that unborn child through a process with a similar likelihood of death.

Using your logic, if we were living 500 years ago when the child mortality rate for children under 10 was substantial, you are saying that this fact would therefore make murder of children under 10 acceptable since they had a relatively high chance of dying anyway?

We could accept that the biology as it is. Understand that we have no right to be conceived. And allow those who are affected by the pregnancy make their own decisions.

You're correct in that we don't "have a right to be conceived", the notion of which is nonsensical. How could a life which has not been created yet have a right to ensure its own creation? However once we are conceived, we are a separate being which should have the same right to exist as any other.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Secondly, some of these fetuses are alive and can move and even cry

What does the ability to cry have to do with anything? Crocodiles are notorious for shedding 'tears'. I cry whenever I yawn. So what?

I hope never in you life would you have to hold a human fetus that moving and crying and know that's its gonna die in a few minutes and there's nothing you can do, its not yet capable of accepting external food. and God forbid if that day comes, believe me you wont be the same person anymore, especially if you are a father (or mother).

1) You don't have to tell it anything.
2) Even if you did, it wouldn't understand you.
3) Even if it understood you, it wouldn't understand what death meant.
4) Again, what does 'not yet capable of accepting external food' have to do with this?
5) If it is outside the uterus it is not a fetus.

What if a doctor's involved? Are you saying it can't be murder if a doctor's involved?

Murder is unlawful killing of another individual with malicious intent. Abortion is not illegal, and it is arguably not malicious. Calling abortion murder is just creating a straw man.

You're just saying that because you weren't aborted. Had you been you wouldn't give a fig.

Win.

 

[Mursilis]

They look alike genetically as they share tons of the same genes.

No they don't - the DNA patterns are very different!

 

[Red Dawn]

What if a doctor's involved? Are you saying it can't be murder if a doctor's involved?

Is that your fucking argument??

 

[WhipperSnapper]

So? 1000 years ago, atheists likely would have been a miniscule minority is most any society. Does that affect whatsoever your decision to be one today? I thought you were smarter than to make an "appeal to the masses" argument here.

The answer is, No.

I'm not saying that the "Atheists for Life" are wrong because most atheists support legal abortion. Rather, I'm saying that they have a bad philosophy. You can have a bad philosophy without being a religious mystic. Now, I suspect that most of those guys are former Christians who are hanging on to vestiges of Christianity in their new found "atheist" philosophy, but that probably isn't the case with all of them.

Atheism itself is not really a philosophy at all. It's merely a belief that a God does not exist or at least that there is no reason to believe in one and that such belief is irrational and wrong. If you were an atheist and you wrote a 300 page book about your philosophy, you might take a page or two to explain that some people have this strange belief in a God being and that it makes no sense under your philosophy and then move on to more important topics. (See the treatment of atheism and belief in God in the book Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand.)

So look for it. For someone who claims to support objectivity, you're hiding from it awfully hard as you perpetuate the myth about Christians being pro-life. Obama's pro-choice - does that mean he's lying when he claims to be a Christian?

It depends on their definition of "Christian". I generally regard the Catholics as being the real Christians. I don't know enough about other Christian sects to say what their core beliefs are, but I'm pretty much under the impression that they all believe that God breathes a soul into an embryo at conception. Now, perhaps some Christan sects think that even then God allows abortion, I don't know.

Assuming that almost all Christian sects would oppose abortion in principle, then I think that most Christians who support legal abortion and other secular things are either confused or in denial about their beliefs.

It's hard to come to the realization that you really don't believe what you were indoctrinated to believe by your parents. If you grew up as a Christian, it might be hard to come to the realization that your actual beliefs conflict with your professed religion.

Consider the Catholic who thinks that birth control is OK and that abortion should be legal. Well, maybe you're really just not a Catholic anymore and instead have some other sort of belief system.

I don't know enough about what sect of Christianity Obama believes in to say. In my view, he's really not a Christian. But like I said, it depends on how you define Christianity. I'm really not all that concerned about what exactly is and is not Christianity. I'm more concerned about helping people question their belief systems and whether or not their beliefs contradict their professed religion.

I think that if many Americans could realize that they really aren't Christian and that they need to find or define a new philosophy that it might make it easier for them to advocate in favor of legal abortion and for allowing gay marriage, etc.

In contrast, I think many people almost feel obligated to oppose things like abortion and gay marriage, or to at least temper their support for them, because the religion they profess to believe in says that it's bad even though they might not really believe it.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Sorry , Murder isn't an elective medical procedure, it's not the same logic.

So the only difference between permitting murder to occur and opposing abortion is that the law allows abortion but makes murder illegal?

(What was the point of these comments again? Weren't we discussing whether or not opponents of abortion should try to make abortion illegal?)

 

[Moonbeam]

No they don't - the DNA patterns are very different!

We are talking genes not patterns. We share genes with the earliest forms of life and it's no accident. We were once just like them and from them consciousness could arise again.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Do you eat meat? It might be instructive for you to visit a slaughterhouse.

I've toured many slaughterhouses over the years (at least a dozen I'd say)...both beef and pork....I didn't eat hot dogs for years.

Perhaps we should take these fetuses to term and harvest for food...who cares if it's cow meat or not...meat is meat after all. I bet they'd make a mighty fine hot dog for you.

You make it sound as though there are people inside the "abortion survivors". There's no personality inside of those fetuses to "survive". It's almost akin to an animal getting hit in a car accident, except the animal probably has a much higher state of consciousness than the fetus.

People are not people when they're born? I thought you would at least grant me that. So...just at what point do they become "people" in your eyes? 6 months, 1 yr old, 3 yrs old?

Sure, I'd be happy to argue that abortion should be legal. They, too, as people now have the freedom to abort and to benefit from it.

Yes...abortion is wonderful and you're a wonderful person...I'm sure you would do just that.

Accidents can happen in all sorts of human endeavors. The only way to prevent them is simply not to live at all. Perhaps if the doctors had just euthanized the fetus right then and there, this wouldn't have happened.

Yes...all kinds of problems go away when unwanted people die....but 'accidents' are bound to happen when you're killing a few million babies a year. Tough luck for those dumbasses that didn't know better to die when they were supposed to.

Potentiality is not an argument against actuality.

Gianna Jessen is an actuality...no?

What about all of the wasted sperm and egg in the world? Would you agree that contraception is an abomination because it essentially ends the existence of people who might otherwise be born?

I have no issues with wasted sperm and egg in the world.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Define this term "personality" which you claim grants us our humanness.

I can't define it in words because it's an ostensive concept. It's fundamental and lies at the root of other thoughts and concepts.

It's like trying to explain to a blind man what the color "red" is. You know it through your sensory experiences. (You can explain it scientifically, but that's not the same thing.) That doesn't mean that "red"--our perception of our eyes' interaction with this sliver of the visible light spectrum--does not exist or that it is an invalid concept.

It's the same thing with other fundamental concepts such as "existence" or "consciousness". (Personality is almost the same thing as consciousness.)

Why don't you come out and make a good, solid argument against abortion? Can you explain how killing a 2-day old embryo is murder? Because God says so?

 

[Red Dawn]

=WhipperSnapper;30324092]So the only difference between permitting murder to occur and opposing abortion is that the law allows abortion but makes murder illegal?

Wait..WUT???

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I am a non-vegetarian not a cannibal. There is a huge difference, we are omnivorous animals, we still have a set of canine teeth.
Secondly, some of these fetuses are alive and can move and even cry, I hope never in you life would you have to hold a human fetus that moving and crying and know that's its gonna die in a few minutes and there's nothing you can do, its not yet capable of accepting external food. and God forbid if that day comes, believe me you wont be the same person anymore, especially if you are a father (or mother).

***
Sorry to sound like a pro-lifer, I am definitely not one, but at the same time late term abortion and ending any pregnancy more than 4 months old is very troubling.

What I'm trying to help you see is that even though the fetus looks like a person, there really isn't a person inside of it. There's no personality in there--there isn't an awareness with abstract thoughts in there. There's nothing like a human consciousness inside. You have no difficulty with herding animal consciousnesses and killing them for your food, so what's the problem?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

A fair start, but ambiguous as all heck.

Yeah. I don't know if I want to write an entire text on meta-ethics for the purpose of answering all that. I'm not sure my own thoughts are well-defined enough to really do that.

 

[Moonbeam]

I have no issues with wasted sperm and egg in the world.

Of course not, you are totally irrational. But I wonder at what micro-second in time does a sperm and egg actually become human? Is it when they are in waving distance, when they touch, when the sperm enters the egg, when the haploids start to line up, when they can no longer become twins triplets etc. There just has to be some micro-second when something miraculous and sacred appears like magic but I'll be fucked if I know just when. Maybe it's when a child becomes conscious of itself as a human being.

I know that when the ancient Jews, famous for talking directly with God, dealt with this matter they decided, practical rascals that they were, that it had something to do with breath and that there was no soul there until them. But then they probably didn't know about the zygote and sperm and egg and so had nothing like that on which to project their imaginations.

But there are folks who claim that the universe itself is alive and god is found in stones which they worship. Do not smash those stones with you abortion hammer please. Folk at that level of evolution may just up and kill you.

 

[BoberFett]

Sorry , Murder isn't an elective medical procedure, it's not the same logic.

It is when you hire Dr. Kevorkian, and he was sent to prison for doing a medical procedure that the patient requested.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

People are not people when they're born? I thought you would at least grant me that. So...just at what point do they become "people" in your eyes? 6 months, 1 yr old, 3 yrs old?

My view is that human consciousness, a personality, starts to develop sometime after birth. In the womb, there is nothing to really perceive, so even assuming that a fetus's brain were capable of forming a consciousness, it can't do so because there is nothing to perceive, no perceptions (nothing) to think about, and no need to think about anything.

However, for societal purposes we need to have clear, well-defined laws. The logical place to draw the line is thus at birth. At this point the baby is now individuated and no longer living inside of the mother and we know that it doesn't yet possess a human consciousness. It makes sense to use it as a dividing line for legal purposes. Also, since it's impossible to determine when an infant starts to have a human consciousness, it's a safe place to draw the line and we don't have to deal with two month-long court hearings to make that sort of decision.

Yes...all kinds of problems go away when unwanted people die....but 'accidents' are bound to happen when you're killing a few million babies a year. Tough luck for those dumbasses that didn't know better to die when they were supposed to.

What you described is unfortunate and we can feel badly about it. It's just not an argument against legal abortion.

Gianna Jessen is an actuality...no?

Today, yes. At the time of the abortion, no.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Wait..WUT???

Without more context for exactly what I was responding to, it's hard to discuss it further.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

My view is that human consciousness, a personality, starts to develop sometime after birth. In the womb, there is nothing to really perceive, so even assuming that a fetus's brain were capable of forming a consciousness, it can't do so because there is nothing to perceive, no perceptions (nothing) to think about, and no need to think about anything.

However, for societal purposes we need to have clear, well-defined laws. The logical place to draw the line is thus at birth. At this point the baby is now individuated and no longer living inside of the mother and we know that it doesn't yet possess a human consciousness. It makes sense to use it as a dividing line for legal purposes. Also, since it's impossible to determine when an infant starts to have a human consciousness, it's a safe place to draw the line and we don't have to deal with two month-long court hearings to make that sort of decision.

So...perception is reality? Is that the argument you're making? Do you have children?

What you described is unfortunate and we can feel badly about it. It's just not an argument against legal abortion.

Tell all the problems with making abortion illegal and I'll tell you how unfortunate those problems are and we can feel badly about it. And then I'll tell you that it's just not an argument for legal abortion. Since it's your logic...I imagine that would make perfect sense to you.

Today, yes. At the time of the abortion, no.

Yes...I see....just an unfortunate actuality of little consequence.