When Does Life Begin?

Chumly wrote:

neologist wrote:

Chumly wrote:

neologist wrote:

Chumly wrote:

neologist wrote:

Whether religion is or is not a superstition has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

Au contraire, religion being shown as superstition amplifies the absurdity of claiming a human being is a fertilized egg because a ghost told you.

Au dweebaire. What if the fertilized egg is, in fact, a human being?

A position I have held even through my younger atheist days.

Nothing told me. It's just obvious.

Shirley if it's that obvious you'll have no trouble presenting the obvious empirically.


Go ahead now........

Shirley's not here. She had to go to work early.

I'll ask Carole when she wakes up.

But we'll probably answer by saying it's intuitive. That's probably why we offer words of comfort when a woman miscarries. Intuitive.

And we would no doubt mention the fact that we have never heard of a fertilized human egg, left to its natural course, developing into anything else.

Modern technological interventions notwithstanding, of course.

Your intuition, as obvious as it might appear to you, cannot pass the muster of objective empiricism, however your intuition can pass muster as superstition/religion.

In the matter of assessing a human fertilized egg versus a fully-fledged human being: since you eschewed objective empiricism and relied on intuition in your younger atheist days, I question your belief that you were an atheist.

Did you just say the belief that a fertilized human egg will develop into a human is superstition?

Chumly wrote:

BTW should I take it that you have no qualms about in vitro fertilized human eggs being feed to your goldfish?

Is there such a thing as a double or triple non sequitur?

I enjoy your posts, Chumly. They represent a dimension of reality seldom seen.

I am glad to hear that you don't support partial birth abortions, although it seems to conflict with your earlier statement that the unborn is not a living human being until it is born.

Perhaps you meant 'until the birth process begins'.

I'm not really sure what you meant.

-----------------------------------------

But since there are at least some circumstances under which you do NOT support legal abortion, EXACTLY when do you think it should be legal/illegal?

You mentioned the 'first trimester'.

Should abortion be illegal after that?

If not, then exactly when?

Diest TKO wrote:

real life wrote:

Diest TKO wrote:

RL - As far as your line of questioning goes for JPB, why does the his moral opinion hinge on his belief of what the unborn is?

T
K
O

The whole abortion question is over what the unborn is.

no the question of "what the unborn is" is not what the issue hinges on.

According to the justices in Roe v Wade, if the personhood of the unborn is established, then the case for legal abortion 'collapses'.

real life wrote:

JPB wrote:

real life wrote:

JPB wrote:

real life wrote:

JPB wrote:

real life wrote:

JPB wrote:

real life wrote:

Diest TKO wrote:

RL - As far as your line of questioning goes for JPB, why does the his moral opinion hinge on his belief of what the unborn is?

T
K
O

The whole abortion question is over what the unborn is.

If the unborn is a living human being , then it should be illegal to kill it.

If the unborn is just a clump of cells, like a wart, there is nobody on the pro-life side who would consider it immoral to dispose of it.

So why would someone who supports legal abortion consider it to be immoral?

Is it immoral to pop a zit, or remove a mole?

JPB's stated position was support for legal abortion , but a personal position that having one was immoral.

Do you consider those to be contradictory? I do.

No, rl, the whole abortion question is NOT over what the unborn is. The whole abortion question is the attempt to balance conflicting moralities and the interests of the State. TKO's line in the sand explains it well.

In general, moral decisions are between the choice-maker, their conscience, and whatever power exists to judge those choices. You and I do not have that power. I consider a large number of things that I witness every day to be immoral including most of what is on television and much of what is posted on the internet. That doesn't mean I think any of it should be illegal. I strongly oppose the intervention of the government into moral decisions made by individuals unless those decisions impact society as a whole. The greater impact on society as a whole in making abortions illegal is putting poor women in the position of risking their lives to have a procedure that they will have regardless or, (even worse if you are right and the numbers of abortions are reduced) filling the planet with additional large numbers of unwanted, unloved, and uncared for "persons".

I fully appreciate the care and consideration that was given to the issue by the Justices. This was a compassionate evaluation on all sides of the debate.

Then perhaps you will be so kind as to answer what I have asked you several times:

If the unborn is not a living human being, then why do YOU consider abortion to be immoral ?

Where did you see me say that it isn't? I believe I stated that I think the woman is the mother of a potential viable being.

A 'potential viable being' is not the same as a 'living human being' is it?

I have no conflict with the thesis presented in R v W for defining when the potential viable life becomes a human being. I don't consider it a 'living' human being until it is born.

If the unborn is not a 'living' human being until birth, do you support legal partial birth abortions up to the point of full birth?

........... Of course I don't support partial birth abortions -- that's an extreme position.

I am glad to hear that you don't support partial birth abortions, although it seems to conflict with your earlier statement that the unborn is not a living human being until it is born.

Perhaps you meant 'until the birth process begins'.

I'm not really sure what you meant.

-----------------------------------------

But since there are at least some circumstances under which you do NOT support legal abortion, EXACTLY when do you think it should be legal/illegal?

You mentioned the 'first trimester'.

Should abortion be illegal after that?

If not, then exactly when?

You do like to use deeply embedded quotes, don't you?

I remember foxfyre (where is she these days) and others stating that they probably could have lived with R v W as a morally undesirable but legally defensible decision. The greater problem became the moving line. I quoted the thought given to the first trimester benchmark in the decision in the post I deleted. Those charged with drawing the line drew it at 13 weeks. Would I be outraged if it was 14 and not 13? Probably not. Would I sleep better at night if it was 12 and not 13? Probably not.

I can't give you an exact answer because I don't have one. I accept the reasoning of the decision to have it be 13. I've never seen a well considered argument taken from all sides that proposes a different number.

You see it as black and white but it isn't. I understand that you see it that way -- I have my own black and whites. We live in a gray world and in this case I agree that there comes a point where the interest of the State is better served in protecting the unborn over the privacy rights of the pregnant woman. I've read the background that was used to come to the decision made in roe and have no reason to fault it as it applies to balancing conflicting moralities and establishing law that can be sustained.

yes, and challenges to those laws have been largely successful because they swing the pendulum too far -- interests have gone out of balance and away from the center.

The laws specify a consensus of what a correct date is. The judiciary then decides if that consensus is fair, balanced, rational, and constitutional.

oy,

the challenges were successful because the law allowing those abortions was unbalanced.

Can you name me one state where a 8 or 9 month woman can get an abortion on demand?

I asked that question previously

here. and the answer was no. You are saying otherwise. Do you have cases where a near-term pregnant woman decided she didn't want her baby and demand and received an abortion?

A late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation. However, the exact point when a pregnancy becomes late-term is not clearly defined. Some sources define an abortion after 12 completed weeks' gestation as "late".[1] [2] Some sources define an abortion after 16 weeks as "late".[3] [4] [5] Three articles published in 1998 in the same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association could not agree on the definition. Two of the JAMA articles chose the 20th week of gestation to be the point where an abortion procedure would be considered late-term.[6] The third JAMA article chose the third trimester, or 27th week of gestation.[7]

The point at which an abortion becomes late-term is often related to the "viability" (ability to survive outside the uterus) of the fetus. Sometimes late-term abortions are referred to as post-viability abortions. However, viability varies greatly between pregnancies. Nearly all pregnancies are viable after the 27th week, and almost no pregnancies are viable before the 20th week. Everything in between is a "grey area".[7]........................................




...............................The United States Supreme Court decisions on abortion, including Roe v. Wade, allow states to impose more restrictions on post-viability abortions than during the earlier stages of pregnancy.

As of April 2007, 36 states had bans on late-term abortions that were not facially unconstitutional (i.e. banning all abortions) or enjoined by court order.[17] In addition, the Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart ruled that Congress may ban certain late-term abortion techniques, "both previability and postviability".

Some of the 36 state bans are believed by pro-choice organizations to be unconstituational.[18] [19]The Supreme Court has held that bans must include exceptions for threats to the woman's life, physical health, and mental health, but four states allow late-term abortions only when the woman's life is at risk; four allow them when the woman's life or physical health is at risk, but use a definition of health that pro-choice organizations believe is impermissibly narrow.[17] Assuming that one of these state bans is constitutionally flawed, then that does not necessarily mean that the entire ban would be struck down: "invalidating the statute entirely is not always necessary or justified, for lower courts may be able to render narrower declaratory and injunctive relief."[20]

Also, 13 states prohibit abortion after a certain number of weeks' gestation (usually 24 weeks).[17] The U.S. Supreme Court held in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services that a statute may create "a presumption of viability" after a certain number of weeks, in which case the physician must be given an opportunity to rebut the presumption by performing tests.[21] Therefore, those 13 states must provide that opportunity. Because this provision is not explicitly written into these 13 laws, as it was in the Missouri law examined in Webster, pro-choice organizations believe that such a state law is unconstitutional, but only "to the extent that it prohibits pre-viability abortions".[18]

Ten states require a second physician to approve.[17] The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a requirement of "confirmation by two other physicians" (rather than one other physician) because "acquiescence by co-practitioners has no rational connection with a patient's needs and unduly infringes on the physician's right to practice".[22] Pro-choice organizations such as the Guttmacher Institute therefore interpret some of these state laws to be unconstitutional, based on these and other Supreme Court rulings, at least to the extent that these state laws require approval of a second or third physician.[17]

Nine states have laws that require a second physician to be present during late-term abortion procedures in order to treat a fetus if born alive.[17] The Court has held that a doctor's right to practice is not infringed by requiring a second physician to be present at abortions performed after viability in order to assist in saving the life of the fetus.[23]

Not that I could not respond in kind, and lay to waste your counters, but 4 questions come to mind:

1) Who actually bothers to read this stuff, outside of maybe "we few" (shakespearean cliché - couldn't resist)?
2) I have not seen novelty in argumentation from a religionist in some time, so where's the peppiness?
3) Have your perspectives in any way changed due to this thread's dialogs?
4) Is it your expectation that your perspectives (or some other poster's perspectives) will change due to this thread's dialogs?

To learn from other posters. I give credit to Setanta, the late Timberlandko, and not a few others.

To present a point of view to the many who read these fora, but decline to post.

It's an arms length thing, I know, and may never become more. But it is pleasurable, nevertheless.

Coffee, anyone?

You would learn much more quickly by not presenting argument based on intuition, superstition and myth.

Something I thought I'd never see: Paul Sr, Paul Jr. and Mike from American Chopper were on Martha Stewart. However the unlikely does not justify the implausible in terms of religionist's claims.

Chumly wrote:

You would learn much more quickly by not presenting argument based on intuition, superstition and myth.

Neither the desire for license nor the hope of reward should direct our reason. Whether many or few, let the readers judge.

neologist wrote:

Chumly wrote:

You would learn much more quickly by not presenting argument based on intuition, superstition and myth.

Neither the desire for license nor the hope of reward should direct our reason. Whether many or few, let the readers judge.

Wisdom avers that logic with empiricism should provide the dictates.