Al Bundy wrote:

girevik wrote:

Al Bundy wrote:

girevik wrote:

CenterBHSFan wrote:

Jason Bourne wrote: Or would that make it more difficult to disconnect one's self from choice and consequence?

I would suspect that this is a viable answer for these folks for are pro-abortion.

No one I have ever met is "pro-abortion", no one. I simply don't think a rapist should get to see the fruits of his labor, I don't think it's cool to force a girl to give birth to their own brothers and sisters, and I also care about the health of the living human being who is involved.

I'm not pro-root chanal either, they have to happen sometimes as well.

Wow! Comparing a baby to a root canal?

You may not like my opinion, but would it trouble you to be honest about it?

I was clearly comparing a medical procedure that I'm not fond of to another that I am also not fond of.

I am being honest. I don't see a dental procedure and executing a baby as the same thing. The next time I need to schedule a dental appointment, I'll just call up Susan Smith.

Are you one of those guys who you read about getting married to women who are in prison? How else would you know how to contact her?

Don't just limit it to health care, try to get some hot gambling tips from her too. Let me know how it works out, kplzthnkx.

girevik wrote:

Al Bundy wrote:

girevik wrote:

CenterBHSFan wrote:

Jason Bourne wrote: Or would that make it more difficult to disconnect one's self from choice and consequence?

I would suspect that this is a viable answer for these folks for are pro-abortion.

No one I have ever met is "pro-abortion", no one. I simply don't think a rapist should get to see the fruits of his labor, I don't think it's cool to force a girl to give birth to their own brothers and sisters, and I also care about the health of the living human being who is involved.

I'm not pro-root chanal either, they have to happen sometimes as well.

Wow! Comparing a baby to a root canal?

You may not like my opinion, but would it trouble you to be honest about it?

I was clearly comparing a medical procedure that I'm not fond of to another that I am also not fond of.

You may not like my opinions as well. That's fine.

But, I don't know if anybody can honestly be "neutral" about it.

Personally, I'm against abortion unless we're speaking of a few, comparatively rare instances. In other words, I'm against abortion as a means of birth control.

girevik wrote:

CenterBHSFan wrote:

Jason Bourne wrote: Or would that make it more difficult to disconnect one's self from choice and consequence?

I would suspect that this is a viable answer for these folks for are pro-abortion.

No one I have ever met is "pro-abortion", no one. I simply don't think a rapist should get to see the fruits of his labor, I don't think it's cool to force a girl to give birth to their own brothers and sisters, and I also care about the health of the living human being who is involved.

I'm not pro-root chanal either, they have to happen sometimes as well.

You do realize that the "rapes/incest/health of mother" reasons accounts for like 1 in 25 abortions, or 4%? 96% of abortions are basically for birth control.

But that has nothing to do with this article.

jmog wrote: You do realize that the "rapes/incest/health of mother" reasons accounts for like 1 in 25 abortions, or 4%? 96% of abortions are basically for birth control.

But that has nothing to do with this article.

Not disputing, but per the rules, care to post a link?

Do you have a funeral when a man loses a limb? That's human life. Those cells died. We must mourn the loss of human life..... yeah right.

A side note about smoking in a bar, whether a girl is or is not pregnant has no medical impairment of myself. If someone smokes near me, I do breath in their smoke, whether I choose to smoke or not.

Now, back to this topic...

I've always felt until the fetus can live independently of the mother, it's still a part of the mother. Take a fetus out of woman at 2 months, it will not live. Take a fetus out at around 7 months or so, and it will probably survive. One of the reasons I'm opposed to late-term abortions (plus, if she hadn't figured out in 6-7 months whether she wanted to bring it to term, she missed the boat).

Truth of the matter is, nowhere in the constitution is there a clause regarding embryos, zygotes, or fetii. If you haven't had a 'birthday' yet, you're not born. If you're not born, you're not a man (or woman). If you're not a man, you don't have constitutionally protected rights.

My sister's had two miscarriages. Both times she wished to bring the child to term. Yet, after the D&C, there was no funeral. No wake. The remains were not treated as anything more than biological waste. Hate to say it, but that didn't really seem like a human died. Even to my sister trying to have children. It was a setback, not a death.

Hate to say it, but until these pro-lifers start valuing the human life that's already been born, I give little credence to their incessant need for more humans on this planet.

Sykotyk

ptown_trojans_1 wrote:

jmog wrote: You do realize that the "rapes/incest/health of mother" reasons accounts for like 1 in 25 abortions, or 4%? 96% of abortions are basically for birth control.

But that has nothing to do with this article.

Not disputing, but per the rules, care to post a link?

Here is a link that has it at 95%

http://www.abortiontv.com/Misc/AbortionStatistics.htm#Why Abortions Are Performed

Al Bundy wrote:

ptown_trojans_1 wrote:

jmog wrote: You do realize that the "rapes/incest/health of mother" reasons accounts for like 1 in 25 abortions, or 4%? 96% of abortions are basically for birth control.

But that has nothing to do with this article.

Not disputing, but per the rules, care to post a link?

Here is a link that has it at 95%

http://www.abortiontv.com/Misc/AbortionStatistics.htm#Why Abortions Are Performed

Looks like you missed the fine print there. This is what was listed as the source: Central Illinois Right To Life ... I'd say that is bit swayed.

I'm not saying this can't be true but please provide a source that has a little more weight to it.

Sykotyk wrote: I've always felt until the fetus can live independently of the mother, it's still a part of the mother. Take a fetus out of woman at 2 months, it will not live. Take a fetus out at around 7 months or so, and it will probably survive. One of the reasons I'm opposed to late-term abortions (plus, if she hadn't figured out in 6-7 months whether she wanted to bring it to term, she missed the boat).

I get what you're saying, but if you left a newborn on the side of the road it would not survive by itself. If you took a fetus out of a woman and put it on life support it would survive. Some babies are born with medical conditions and need a lot of hospital care, but then grow into perfectly healthy adults. There has to be someone there to take care of the child and possibly medical assistance for him/her to live. I think that puts a hole in the theory that a baby is alive if it can survive on it's own. Men have sperm that die every day, and women lose an egg every month. If fertilized, they will hopefully grow into a healthy adult. I don't think sperm/eggs are living beings, and I definitely do think there is a line between what is living and what isn't. I'm just not 100% sure where that line is.

FatHobbit wrote: I definitely do think there is a line between what is living and what isn't. I'm just not 100% sure where that line is.

This is a difficult question, but I think a reasonable place to start would be around 26 weeks when connections between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex begin to form. Even if we accept that the fetus/unborn child has some kind of right to life and that it has a soul and has seen the face of God, a theist of this kind must accept some kind of dualist philosophy in regards to the nature of the mind and it's relation to the organic machine of the human body. Given this, this "soul" somehow inhabiting the fetus or attached to it in some way is constrained by the physical limits of the fetus' developing brain. To see how this might work for instance, I as a flesh and blood human being cannot experience the warmth of the sun on my face when the windows to my house are closed. In the same way, a soul, cannot experience pain, or wakefulness or consciousness when the circuitry between the cortex and the thalamus is not even there. My ability to experience external stimuli is limited by the structure I'm "in" just like a soul's might be.

Hence, when the physical limitations are removed away, this awakening of the very beginnings of consciousness, is what intuitively seems to be, if not the beginning of "life" but the beginning of "being alive," to the point where if this flame completely ceases there is "death."

Consequently, when we weigh the facts and circumstances and there is a woman who has carried a fetus for, say, 28 weeks and suddenly looks upon the fetus as a "parasite", a being living inside her against her will...although it seems the most crucial property right to me to be able to remove individuals from inside one's own body if one pleases, at the point where this being has at the very least the foundations for wakefulness and consciousness, the State may have a compelling interest to deprive this woman of her property rights in order to preserve the potential "aliveness," however faint, of the fetus.

Ultimately, what I meant by that incoherent jib jab is that Pro-lifers, even if we accept many of their presumptions about life beginning at conception, the soul, etc. It seems to me that most restriction they could justifiably gain on abortion procedures would be to get them disallowed post-around 26 weeks or so when the crucial neurobiology is there for any kind of even the slightest conscious experience.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Reasons_for_abortions

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/abortion-facts-and-statistics.html

I could keep going, the "lowest" percent of these 3 for "social" reasons is 93%. Only about 4-7% are for rape/incest/health of baby or mother depending on which survey you look at.

It isn't that hard, do a google search, even the "pro choice" websites agree with these figures.

BoatShoes wrote:Even if we accept that the fetus/unborn child has some kind of right to life and that it has a soul and has seen the face of God

For the sake of this argument, let's pretend there is no god.

BoatShoes wrote:Consequently, when we weigh the facts and circumstances and there is a woman who has carried a fetus for, say, 28 weeks and suddenly looks upon the fetus as a "parasite", a being living inside her against her will...although it seems the most crucial property right to me to be able to remove individuals from inside one's own body if one pleases,

I'm not sure a newborn has a fully formed conscience. (I'm not even sure what defines conscience, but I don't think anyone remembers when they were a newborn) But I also don't think it's right to kick a newborn out of your house because they won't stop crying. If you did, they would not survive on their own. If being pregnant is inconvenient and a fetus is a parasite, I would think a newborn is much more inconvenient and demands a lot more time and resources. How would that be different than ripping an unborn infant out of it's mothers womb?

FatHobbit wrote:
I'm not sure a newborn has a fully formed conscience. (I'm not even sure what defines conscience, but I don't think anyone remembers when they were a newborn) But I also don't think it's right to kick a newborn out of your house because they won't stop crying. If you did, they would not survive on their own. If being pregnant is inconvenient and a fetus is a parasite, I would think a newborn is much more inconvenient and demands a lot more time and resources. How would that be different than ripping an unborn infant out of it's mothers womb?

Essentially what I argued is that once a fetus has even the barest of neurobiology capable of experiencing any kind of consciousness or pain around 26-30 weeks, the state may have a compelling interest in preventing the mother from exercising her free will and removing the fetus from her body just like the state has a compelling interest in preventing mothers from throwing babies out into the street.

So in a sense, I think I"m agreeing with you...it's not so different. But, on one hand it is...certainly you would agree that the your inner body cavities are a much more intimate and private space than your house. For instance, even the biggest curmudgeons might reluctantly let someone stay over in their home, but that is entirely different than letting a person whom you want no part of live inside of your body against your dreams and hopes and whims and fancies.

But that point is moot for me because I'm actually arguing that pro-lifers may have a case to restrict abortion once the anatomy is there for cognitive experience.

Beyond that though, Up and until there is some reasonable notion that the fetus has even the barest neurobiology to possibly experience one murmur of existence, any interest the State may have in promoting the culmination of that pregnancy does not at that point supervene on a woman's fundamental liberty because the termination of the pregnancy would assuredly not cease any "aliveness" from continuing on even though it may interrupt the process of "life"

A Pro-lifer might argue that the state has a compelling interest in restricting the mother's property rights the second she conceives but I don't find this convincing when most terminated pregnancies are hardly different than the monthly period experienced by every fertile woman (who's not bulimic or own coke of course).

And again just to clarity to Mr. Fathobbit, what I was getting in the part you quoted....even though it seems like such a strong right, that you may have a say as to who and what resides in and grows in your inner body cavities, this strong property right could be possibly be outweighed. I.E. kind of like when the City can go ahead and take your property by eminent domain if it has a compelling interest to do so, etc.

BoatShoes wrote: So in a sense, I think I"m agreeing with you...it's not so different. But, on one hand it is...certainly you would agree that the your inner body cavities are a much more intimate and private space than your house. For instance, even the biggest curmudgeons might reluctantly let someone stay over in their home, but that is entirely different than letting a person whom you want no part of live inside of your body against your dreams and hopes and whims and fancies.

I definitely agree that a person's body is a more intimate and private space than their house. Thanks for explaining that position to me a little better.

BoatShoes wrote:A Pro-lifer might argue that the state has a compelling interest in restricting the mother's property rights the second she conceives but I don't find this convincing when most terminated pregnancies are hardly different than the monthly period experienced by every fertile woman (who's not bulimic or own coke of course).

Your description is a vivid one, but I think I agree with the concept. IMO there is not much difference between a women having her period to very early abortions.

BoatShoes wrote: And again just to clarity to Mr. Fathobbit, what I was getting in the part you quoted....even though it seems like such a strong right, that you may have a say as to who and what resides in and grows in your inner body cavities, this strong property right could be possibly be outweighed. I.E. kind of like when the City can go ahead and take your property by eminent domain if it has a compelling interest to do so, etc.

I get what you're saying, but I think after reading this I don't like using property rights to justify having/not having an abortion. At least in my mind it still comes down to when is the baby actually alive? If we were to grow babies in test tubes, would they be less alive? They certainly would not be able to support themselves at any stage of their life before 10 years old, so I don't like using that as a criteria is a good one.

I am conflicted as to when it could possibly be ok in my mind for someone to have an abortion. This argument for me is more of a hypothetical as to what I would do if my girlfriend were pregnant. I can't make up my mind for myself. I have no interest in forcing my opinion on anyone else. In this case I think everyone has to make decisions for themselves and then live with whatever consequnces come with that.