Let me think about it........aaaaahhh no.
Yes otherwise it all just sounds like irrational hysteria.
No
Because "offspring" are not mindless biology. A mosquito will never be more than a mosquito. You can not compare the unborn to mosquitos because they are humans.
A strong proud woman and mother that understands the difference between a mosquito and the children born of my womb.
Because I absolutely refuse to accept or place any value on your assertion that humans in the womb are different from humans outside the womb. I don't discriminate against human life based on age.
Well, I've read that the demand for babies of African ancestry was rather low back then, so I'd expect a significant "black" population in those orphanages. I'm not sure to what extent this aspect of the supply/demand situation would change, if all abortions instead became potential adoptions. Perhaps I should mention a case about which I'm personally aware, although I was only on the periphery of the goings-on. The daughter of a lady acquaintance became pregnant, and the lady went about searching for potential adoptive parents, well before the birth was due. She succeeded, and I'm not sure that any govt. agencies were involved, other than what you might expect for appropriate formal record-keeping paperwork. I never asked what option might have been pursued, had no potential parents been found. Relevant to the current question, I'd say that the appropriate compromise does not start by insisting that birth occur; it starts by finding those adoptive parents you seem so sure will appear. I have no doubt that initially, plenty will be found, but I strongly doubt that this will last over the long run. Abortion then becomes quite equivalent to what the SPCA does, for excess unwanted animals. Especially since we are indeed talking about unborn human animals.talloulou said:
I agree that availability of ordinary birth control methods needs to be tremendously increased. But do remember that something like 50% of abortions are being done to compensate for the failure of ordinary birth control. Only the other 50% can be reduced by increased availabilitiy.talloulou said:
FutureIncoming said:
Obviously you are not living in the Real World. You are totally ignoring the fact that no matter how much space there appears to be, humans consume more resources than mere surface area. And the supply of all resources is finite. I want to know how you can think that human population can endlessly grow when resources (such as the proteins of which human bodies are made) are ultimately limited/finite? A Malthusean Catastrophe is what happens when population hits the first limit. Which it inevitably will, so long as pro-lifers insist that (A) all potential mouths-to-feed must become actual mouths-to-feed, in conjuction with (B) this leads to more births than deaths. Your mere claims that the preceding reasoning is "irrational hysteria" is worthless, unless you can point out the logical flaw. Go ahead! What's the flaw???talloulou said:
I completely agree that a human zygote is perfectly 100% a human organism. I do not agree, however, that this means it deserves as much respect as every other human. The reason for that is that the concept of "person" is more important than the concept of "human". The whole point of us declaring human superiority over animals is not because we are human, but because we are more than only animal. There is absolutely no denying that the 100% human body is also 100% an ordinary animal body. Dare you say that the human body only is superior? On what basis? I can show that you would be wrong, even before you try to form an argument!talloulou said:
UTTERLY FALSE, at least until those offspring grow minds. Why are you lying so blatantly?talloulou said:
So what? The fact that an unborn human might become more than that is in no way a requirement that it become more than that!talloulou said:
UTTERLY FALSE. I have already compared mosquitoes and humans in considerable detail:talloulou said:
talloulou said:
You never did reply to that, talloulou. Furthermore, the way you expressed yourself this time, as compared to that earlier message, is like saying "You can not compare zebras to mosquitos because they are zebras." Yet both are multicellular organisms, etc. Your new expression is merely hinting at some sort of specialness for humans, without specifying it it detail. A worthless hint, that is, unless you decide to be precise! And yet I have specified that specialness in exact detail; it is the mind that makes us persons more special than mosquitoes -- and exactly-as-much more special than unborn humans. Period.FutureIncoming said:
Fine. So long as you (and others) don't require that "children" be confused with "unborn humans".talloulou said:
And Society must recognize that too much of a good thing is ALWAYS a bad thing. ANY good thing, ALWAYS.talloulou said:
FALSE. In the long run, it would actually be more detrimental to consider "human" to be more important than "person", because that attitude sets-us-up for interstellar war with nonhuman persons. We have lots of experience --all bad-- with thinking that some parochial aspect of one tribe makes it "better" than others. And human genetics is very obviously a parochial aspect of humans, compared to the wide/vast Universe. That's why I focus on minds; A mind doesn't require a particular body to exist, and all person-class minds are equal in at least being more-than-merely-animal. No parochialism is possible, if that much is accepted!talloulou said:
FutureIncoming said:
In other words, you are just a woman who likes the status quo, and who doesn't understand the similarities between a mosquito and an unborn human. Especially the "parasitic" aspect of them. And what of the strong proud women who think they don't need to be slaves to Mindless Natural Biology? Why is your opinion so superior to theirs that it must be forced upon them?talloulou said:
FutureIncoming said:
Yet they obviously and in measurable fact are different. The ones inside the womb are not breathing on their own, for example, while the ones outside the womb are. That counts as a difference, doesn't it? Oh, I know you mean "a difference that matters", but then we now get to discuss "matters with respect to exactly what"? So far you appear to have taken the position that "matters with respect to human life" is more important than "matters with respect to personhood", yet you have failed to explain why that should be the case. See above about interstellar war, ultimately due to worthless prejudice about "human life" being more important than generic personhood?talloulou said:
Actually, you do, if you support use of the Morning After Pill. You did write, after all:talloulou said:
Anyway, you are still claiming that "humanness" is somehow more important than "personness", without yet explaining why. When do you plan to explain why?talloulou said:
If it was the only way used, I might agree. But since it isn't, and is half-the-time used as a backup plan when other methods fail, I have to disagree.talloulou said:
Agreed. When they work, that is.talloulou said:
Well, there is, for the moment, the ignorance factor. Wide availability is not automatically also widespread knowledge of wide availability. Give it some time. I agree that this ought to work as a way to reduce the abortion rate. But I don't think it reasonable to think that it should be doing it all-at-once and immediately. Umm...for one thing, I've heard that there are pharmacists out there who will not fill prescriptions for Morning After Pills, due to their own ignorant beliefs about the personhood of zygotes and blastocysts. How do you plan on addressing that aspect of the overall issue? "Wide availability" may not be as wide as you think!!!talloulou said:
Well...both sides pay lip[ service to the fact that abortion should be rare, but only pro-life seems to put the $$$ where their mouth is. That is what I was referring to. Pro-life relies on donated money while the abortion industry MAKES money off from abortions. I think it's pretty evident who is more willing to work to reduce the number of abortions and who is not. Further, 1069 said (in a post somewhere) that the claim of pro-choice to want to work toward abortion being unnecessary was pretty much a political maneuver to placate the masses and not really a core value of the pro-choice crowd. I find that very telling concerning the nefarious underbelly of the movement. It's really very much about money.
Ummmmmhmmmmm! Sounds familiar...
I understand and it makes complete sense to me why you would feel so impassioned about this topic. I don't think your experiences are unusual.
Exactly.
Check out their tax forms.
I mean the lip-service without the action. Pro-choice wants division--when there is division, they can marginalize by pointing to aggressive pro-life tactics and say "look at those fanatics." That is why I refuse to call it "murder" per se--because it is legal. There is no rational argument against labeling it "killing." That's also why I like to cite their own sources rather than use pro-life sources. I find it's hard for pro-choice to argue with Sanger, Planned Parenthood, Guttmacher, medical journals, the CDC etc....those are the very sources they would use. Keeping assertive, but not personally invested in the individual argument drives them nuts
they can't call a person an emotional zealot. That's why they goad and say things to produce reaction. I think the wisest course is not to fall for it. It denies them ammo and reveals their true agenda, IMHO.
Well...that's something....
That's the sense I get, too.:shrug:
FutureIncoming said:
Now that's a major exaggeration. As I write this, I see a total of 3,621 posts by talloulou at this Web site, and I greatly doubt that even most of those included the specified explanation.talloulou said:
Ah, now the fundamental ignorance can be addressed. Human is most certainly NOT what you are. Human is what your body is. And you are not your body. "You", talloulou, the entity that I am addressing in this post, are the mind that inhabits and operates that body. Your body is incapable of responding to this post; it is you-the-mind that is capable, and you-the-mind will use your body as a tool for that purpose (well, assuming you choose to reply, of course). Just think about how few religions would be very convincing, talking about an "afterlife", if every one of them insisted that your body, rotting in its hopefully-distant-future grave, is the most important aspect of "you". Your body is the least important aspect!talloulou said:
Agreed. Except, it can be taken away, by ever-advancing medical prothesis science, replacing broken-down body parts, one after another, until finally (so far only in science fiction) you upload your mind/personality from your dying brain into much-more-durable hardware. You-the-mind would maintain continuity of existence throughout that process, at the end of which you would be 0% human and still 100% the person we call talloulou.talloulou said:
That is something in which Science can have a rational say. Even goofs in suits can be swayed by verifiable data; just recall President Bush saying we need to break our national oil addiction -- because he finally understood that the supply of cheap oil cannot last.talloulou said:
Their religion taught them that angels could walk among men. If angels are due as much respect as a high-ranking human person, then are not angels persons, too? And how is it that angels are instantly recognizeable? If you say "wings", then, duh, that means they aren't human, right?
FutureIncoming said:
And I did not say that it was. READ the quote. The word I used is "parasitic", which describes a behavior pattern, a Modus Operandi. And that word is absolutely a correct description of how a fetus acquires the raw materials to grow two or three kilograms of body mass.Roberdorus said:
And it is absurd of you to try to put words into other people's mouths. I suggest you cease forthwith.Roberdorus said:
For humans, no. For other mammals, possibly. See, other mammals, almost as soon as born, have the physical ability to seek out teats, regardless of the inclinations of the owners of those teats. But a human newborn has no such physical ability; it must be held to a teat, and this is of course a voluntary act. Therefore breast-feeding, among humans, is plainly a gift.Roberdorus said:
Be careful how you use that word "designed". Better to say that as mammals evolved from egg-laying reptiles, a mutual accommodation was reached, between mother and offspring, that happened to work. The failures became extinct, of course. SO: we know that a snake doesn't lay eggs; the eggs are held within the mother's body until they hatch, so snakes give live birth. We know that as the dinosaurs evolved, so did a whole other group called the "mammal-like reptiles". We know that the duckbilled platypus lays leathery eggs; it is a mammal because it also has mammary glands (teats). We know that marsupials have wombs that don't accommodate offspring for very long; a newborn kangaroo, perhaps smaller than your finger, still has the physical ability to crawl from the vagina to the pouch, and find a teat there.Roberdorus said:
THEY ARE CORRECT. Because the only persons affected by abortion are the women involved. The unborn humans that are killed are animals, only animals, and provably only animals. Go ahead! Let's see your evidence that unborn humans are persons!Roberdorus said:
FALSE. It is when your actions harm other persons that your actions are no longer just your business. And a human animal body is not automatically always also a person, in Scientific Fact. It is the mind that is a person. And aborted human bodies don't have minds that are in any sense more powerful than the minds of many an ordinary animal. Simple facts, simple logic, simple conclusion: a woman who gets an abortion is not harming another person.Roberdorus said:
UTTERLY FALSE, and in fact a fundamental lie. Because once conception occurs, many Perfectly Natural things can happen that prevent your so-called "foregone conclusion". If the genetics are faulty, the zygote may not even divide the first time. If it does divide multiple times, forming a blastocyst, it might not crack open and escape the "shell" of the ovum. See What triggers twinning? If the blastocyst does escape the shell, it still might fail to implant in a womb. If it does that, it might go on to do nothing more than form a "hydatiform mole". If instead it actually forms an embryo, it might get displaced and eliminated during the next menstrual cycle (by failing to introduce into the host's body appropriate hormones to prevent it). And even if it succeeds at all those previous things, eventually growing to become a fetus, it still might have genetic defects such that it gets miscarried, right up to the point where miscarriage is indistinguishable from "still birth". Your so-called "foregone conclusion" is not any such thing! It is nothing more than a "potential'. And since that is all it is, just a potential, there is absolutely no need for us to insist that that potential be fulfilled. Do you insist that your own potential to fall down a staircase and break your neck be fulfilled?Roberdorus said:
Yet just because they are expect-able (a more accurate description than "expected"), that does not mean their "potential to exist must be fulfilled". Consider this analogy: If someday we construct an Artificial Intelligence, a person-class computer, and this entity has as part of its construction a large number of ordinary computers, does this mean we must confiscate all remaining ordinary computers and use them to construct Artificial Intelligences, simply because their "potential to exist must be fulfilled"? The analogy is accurate because I am focussing on "must be fulfilled", and not on the method by which the potential of a fetus to become a person, or the potential of a computer to become a person, is fulfilled. So, if the notion of "potential to exist must be fulfilled" is faulty, then abortion is allowable!Roberdorus said:
But that is irrelevant, when potentials and not actualities are being discussed. The actuality of the human fetus is that it has no brainpower characteristics that are greater than those of ordinary animals.Roberdorus said:
Duh, that depends on the definition of "innocent". A fatted calf is innocent, too, and we kill them by the thousand, just because we want veal more than we want fatted calves. We pour oil on ponds to kill innocent mosquito larvae, too; they are unwanted by humans, even though they are wanted by various other animals (tadpoles, perhaps). And so killing innocent unborn human animals is, after all, not significantly different from other human acts of innocent-animal-killing, except in the minds of the ignorant/prejudiced.Roberdorus said:
IRRELEVANT to the abortion issue. We can measure a "gray zone" in which person-class mental abilities grow FROM the ordinary-animal-level, to the normal human level. And we know that this gray zone doesn't even begin until after birth occurs, often not beginning until several months after. Therefore no human fetus can possibly qualify for person status and the legal protections of persons, so abortions remain allowable.Roberdorus said:
toucheNow that's a major exaggeration. As I write this, I see a total of 3,621 posts by talloulou at this Web site, and I greatly doubt that even most of those included the specified explanation.
Yes but this idea is insinuating that my mind is something other than my brain which hasn't ever been proven. My brain will rot just as the rest of my body will.
Well that's getting ahead of science a bit. I do believe that parts can be exchanged for non human parts and at some point in the future the brain may be one of those parts. Currently many people take drugs for chemical imbalances in their brain chemistry. If these drugs work they alter the mind. People have brain surgery and that too can greatly alter who they are and what they are capable of . The mind, as magnificant as it seems, is a body part known as the brain. A dr can affect your speech by poking parts of your brain. He can make you smell stuff that isn't there by poking your brain. It's not a magical body part and it can be manipulated as well as any other part so to claim you are your mind and your brain is somehow greater than the sum of all your parts rings false to me.
Well that's funny! I submit it's because of how we talk. How many people are coming to dinner tonight? ect. Noone asks how many humans are attending?
Tsk, tsk, what a lie. I'm still waiting for your reply to this. I have seen far more failures of pro-lifers to rebut pro-choice arguments, than the other way around. There are whole "abortion forums" out there that appear to be dedicated to erasing, not rebutting, pro-choice arguments. Now why would they do that, if pro-life arguments were so Correct? Well, since every single pro-life argument is actually fundamentally based on either inadequate data and/or invalid data and/or selfish-control-freakishness and/or prejudice and/or hyporcrisy, it is completely to be expected that when their errors are pointed out, pro-lifers quietly slink away like cowards, instead of admitting they are wrong. Why, talloulou recently indicated that she would wait to see billions of people die before admtting she might be wrong about the idea that most unborn humans should become more mouths-to-feed. Perhaps I should add "arrogance" to the list of bases, of pro-life arguments!Stinger said:
FutureIncoming said:
I agree that the notion of souls is not proven, but I was not talking about a soul. I was talking about a mind. It is proved, that minds exist.talloulou said:
The mind is not an ordinary physical part of the body, like the liver or heart or brain. Those are hardware; the mind is software being executed by the hardware (by the brain).talloulou said:
I'm not insinuating anything. The mind is known to exist and is software-being-executed, indeed it is something other than the brain/hardware itself.talloulou said:
FutureIncoming said:
That's irrelevant. I chose my handle "FutureIncoming" for this very specific reason: If various things that we think are Correct today cannot still be Correct in light of incoming future developments, then those various things are actually not Correct today, either. Being workable today does not make them Correct. Things that are truly Correct will always be Correct, such as the equation 1+1=2.talloulou said:
No, the mind is still software, and if you modify the hardware, you can expect the sofware to run differently (ordinary computers crash; the human brain has Redundancy). One consequence of this is that any future brain-replacement hardware must be extremely "mutable", modifiable by the software, so that it can become wired as similarly as possible to the source-brain. No two human brains are wired identically, so it logically figures that no two brain-replacements should be wired identically. As a starting point for this kind of future brain-replacement hardware, there is something called a Field-Programmable Gate Array. It is a silicon microchip with just a bunch of "logic gates" that can be easily connected (internal connections between gates) in umpty-thousand different variations. Modern FPGAs have so many gates that one can be intra-connected to emulate an entire microprocessor of the early-PC era (Z-80, 6502, 8080, 6809, 8086, 68000, etc). We have a ways to go, of course, before a collection of FPGAs has the billions or trillions of gates needed, so it can emulate the hardware of a human brain. Yet no showstoppers exist, to prevent this from becoming a future reality.talloulou said:
Again, if you mess with the hardware, you can expect the software to run differently. I do not need to claim that the mind is more than the sum of the parts of the brain; it should be approximately as obvious as claiming that a computer running a word-processing-program is "more" than a computer which waiting for you to tell it to run a word-processing-program. Your consciousness-program mostly stops running when you are asleep and not dreaming....talloulou said:
A nice possibility, but this doesn't explain why the Founding Fathers specified in the Constitution (1787) that a decennial Census of persons be done, and failed to specify, in the first Census (1790), that unborn humans should be counted as persons.talloulou said:
Look a bit deeper at that law. You will see that every such "legal person" is an organization that requires ordinary persons to be at the base of that organization (or at the base of some sequence of organizations). The law is thus a way of simplifying dealings between whole groups of persons, and that's all there is to it. Heh, consider case law such as "U.S. vs Smith" -- in such a case "U.S." is counted as one person, not three hundred million.talloulou said: