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Intelligent Abortion Exchange

What is your view on abortion?

  • Pro-life in all cases except in danger to the mother's life

    Votes: 10 23.8%

  • Pro-life except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother

    Votes: 2 4.8%

  • Unsure or a little bit of both

    Votes: 2 4.8%

  • Pro-choice but put restrictions on late term abortions

    Votes: 19 45.2%

  • Pro-choice until the time of birth

    Votes: 9 21.4%
  • Total voters
    42
D_NATURED said:
Apparently, my point about the speculative nature of fetuses was lost. Zygotes very often do not grow into adults either. Do you really consider a two-celled "being" to be a human? Are you really willing to subjugate half of the population to your rather creative definition of what a human being is? Where is there any objective attempt to measure and mitigate harm in that opinion? The whole idea is a ham-handed mandate, not a rational accounting of what a human is. Even if your pro-life stance isn't based in any particular faith, it's full of dogma because it ignores so much of reality.
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It's not any other species BUT human.
 
Josie said:
It's not any other species BUT human.
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So what? I can ejaculate a few million cells without trying (OK, just a little) and they're all human cells. They are NOT A human, though. A woman can ovulate until the cows come home and the wasted cells are not humans. They are human, yes, but not at all humans. If you are willing to go to the wall to protect the existence-not even a life-of a zygote, when real women are objectively threatened by that growing being, you've made a choice and it's not the right one. While the fetal threat remains real, the moral choice is more about how we think about women than how we feel about babies.

The way you choose to define and value human life is a curiosity to me. It treats humans as mere genetic manifestations and requires nothing of what really makes a person a person, a name, a personality, a story. Women have all of that and fetuses have speculations. There is no equivalence.
 
D_NATURED said:
So what? I can ejaculate a few million cells without trying (OK, just a little) and they're all human cells. They are NOT A human, though. A woman can ovulate until the cows come home and the wasted cells are not humans. They are human, yes, but not at all humans. If you are willing to go to the wall to protect the existence-not even a life-of a zygote, when real women are objectively threatened by that growing being, you've made a choice and it's not the right one. While the fetal threat remains real, the moral choice is more about how we think about women than how we feel about babies.

The way you choose to define and value human life is a curiosity to me. It treats humans as mere genetic manifestations and requires nothing of what really makes a person a person, a name, a personality, a story. Women have all of that and fetuses have speculations. There is no equivalence.
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Your sperm is PART of a human --- a ZEF IS a human.
 
TheGoverness said:
Sperm is not a part of a human. And nor is a ZEF a human .
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How is sperm not part of a human?

And, yes, a zygote and embryo grow into a fetus who has it's own body, organs, etc. - a human.
 
Josie said:
How is sperm not part of a human?

And, yes, a zygote and embryo grow into a fetus who has it's own body, organs, etc. - a human.
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Nevermind. You are correct when saying that a sperm is a part of a human. My mistake.

But you are still incorrect when saying a ZEF is a human. It's not.
THE PRO-CHOICE ACTION NETWORK
 
TheGoverness said:
Can you quote it for me please, I can't find it.
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I just did. That link goes to all the links of pro-choice people saying how a fetus is a human and it's stupid to say it isn't.
 
Josie said:
Are you on a phone? The link goes directly to the last post on the thread.
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Yes, I'm on a phone.

But I'm not seeing where I liked a post where they were saying that it would be stupid to consider a fetus not a human being.
 
TheGoverness said:
Yes, I'm on a phone.

But I'm not seeing where I liked a post where they were saying that it would be stupid to consider a fetus not a human being.
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Last post on the thread --- Bodhi, minnie and D all said a fetus is a human. If you link back to their response, you clicked "like" on all of them.

Now you're saying a fetus ISN'T a human. Which is it?
 
Josie said:
Last post on the thread --- Bodhi, minnie and D all said a fetus is a human. If you link back to their response, you clicked "like" on all of them. Now you're saying a fetus ISN'T a human. Which is it?
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Perhaps I can explain. The phrase "a human" refers to a biological entity. An individual of this type of entity originates with an egg-fertilization/conception event, yielding a living cell, the zygote. The zygote contains DNA code telling it what to do next. If that code is not defective, the zygote will start dividing (becoming a morula). Later, the morula will become a blastocyst which in turn will become an embryo which in turn will become a fetus.

If the DNA code is defective in a particular way, the blastocyst might become a hydatidiform mole, instead of an embryo. In every case, including the "mole" case, we are talking about "a human". All of their DNA is 100% human in its origin, so what else could they be?

Meanwhile "a human being" is a person. Scientists are quite certain that persons can exist that are not human --dolphins are major contenders for the first-identified entities in that category. Considering that science-fiction authors have been for decades using phrases like "intelligent being", "alien being", and "extraterrestrial being" to reference a variety of different (fictional) types of non-human persons, we should seriously consider the possibility that if dolphins are Formally Acknowledged as having person status, then dolphins likely should be called "dolphin beings". The word "being", see, is simply a way of recognizing person-status --and therefore the phrase "a human being" simply is describing "a human" that also happens to be a person.

Socially, there is widespread consistency here --nobody ever talks about "centipede beings" because no centipede qualifies as a person. In the movie "Alien" a non-human entity is a major character, but it only acts like an animal-class entity, not a person-class entity, and so it is never called "an alien being". Other movies in the "franchise", such as "Alien vs Predator", make it quite clear that that type of (fictional) alien entity is indeed only a mere-animal entity (but clever, like a chimpanzee is clever).

Now it is a fact that not even abortion opponents will claim that a hydatidiform mole is a person, "a human being", even though that entity is most certainly "a human" --its DNA is 100% human in origin, so what else could it be? Thus we have Objectively Verifiable Proof that just because something might be "a human", that does not automatically mean it is also "a human being", a person. As additional data supporting that Proof, there are brain-dead human adults on life-support --the doctors and the scientists and the lawyers ALL agree that the person is dead, even though the human body is still very much alive (except for the brain). Therefore that is another example of "a human" that is not "a human being", a person.

Pro-choicers merely note that since legal personhood begins at birth, the status of any unborn human is never more than "a human", and only after birth does it become "a human being" --because the Law says so! (The scientific data relevant to personhood indicates that it takes more than a year after birth for an average human to start exhibiting any characteristics normally associated with persons --the characteristics allow persons to declare themselves to be superior to mere-animal entities-- but that data is currently irrelevant to the Law, since the Law existed long before the data was discovered.)

OK?
 
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Josie said:
Therefore, a ZEF is a human. You agreed on the other thread that it's silly to think it's not.
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Your mistake is thinking that a "human" can be a being that exists in a fluid filled sack within another. Therefore, what a fetus is, is not a human but a pre-human. To be a human, it would have to have some qualities other than arms and legs. It would have to be an autonomous cell of awareness with which other humans can interface and not just be a lump in some woman's body.
 
Folks, some time ago in another Thread (which now has more than 1000 posts in it) I mentioned I was working on a document titled "The Pseudoperson Manifesto". It is now finished (?) and is available for reading, by anyone interested. It is not especially about the Overall Abortion Debate, because it has a purpose of proposing a new explanation for "the Fermi Paradox", but significant parts of it are quite relevant, since it puts a lot of effort into describing generic characteristics of persons, and how various entities might fail to qualify.

Another thing that's relevant to the Overall Abortion Debate is the fact that abortion is one way to prove humans are superior to mindless animals (non-persons). The actions of abortion opponents imply they think humans are supposed to breed like mindless animals. Perhaps that qualifies abortion opponents as pseudopersons, not true persons...(grin!).
 
Josie said:
Last post on the thread --- Bodhi, minnie and D all said a fetus is a human. If you link back to their response, you clicked "like" on all of them.

Now you're saying a fetus ISN'T a human. Which is it?
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Josie,

I came across these going back to early June, and I think those two pulled a fast one on you. A human being in the womb is still a human being. Maybe the law, and the courts say different, but when DON'T they say different ?

A human being is always, at all times, still a human being. Count on it.
 
RamFel said:
A human being in the womb is
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A FANTASY "PUSHED" BY IGNORANT ABORTION OPPONENTS (and encouraged by the Hear-Say and Say-So of Purely Subjective dictionary definitions, not supported in the slightest by Consistent Objective Facts). The womb-occupant is "a human" only. DIFFERENT FROM a person, "a human being".

RamFel said:
still a human being.
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A human being is always a person.
A person is not always a human being, because a person can be an extraterrestrial alien being, or a machine being, or a dolphin being.
A human being is always a human.
A human is not always a human being, a fact proved by the existence of hydatidiform moles and brain-dead adults on life-support.
The mere claim, that unborn humans qualify as "human beings"/persons is just a claim, unsupported by any evidence whatsoever --and in fact is DISPROVED by the evidence, such as the Census never in more than 220 years considering them to be persons, and the scientific data showing they cannot exceed the mental abilities of ordinary animals until more than a year after birth.

RamFel said:
Maybe the law, and the courts say different, but when DON'T they say different ?
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THE LAW IS SOMETIMES FAULTY, BUT NOT IN THIS CASE. Not when the scientific data supports the Law, with respect to the total lack of person-status (and thus "human being" status) of unborn human animal entities.

RamFel said:
A human being is always, at all times, still a human being. Count on it.
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AGREED. But that still doesn't cause an unborn human animal entity to be more than just a mere-animal entity. We don't call cabbages "cabbage beings", and we don't call ravens "raven beings". We don't call human hydatidiform moles "human beings", and brain-dead humans are corpses, no longer qualifying as "human beings". Only when humans qualify as persons can they legitimately, and consistently with typical language usage of the word "being", deserve to be called "human beings".
 
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