Clarity before agreement, leaving aside emotion and legality — Dennis Prager poses the pertinent moral questions.
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Alas, my sound driver is buggered, so I can’t listen to the video. Nonetheless, many years ago, I asked myself these questions about the “product of conception:”
1. Is it life?
2. Is it human life?
3. Is it innocent human life?
The answers to all three questions are “yes,” and because of that, I cannot see any philosophical basis for destroying it, other than if it’s existence threatens the life of the mother. By that I mean there’s a 100% chance the mother will die absent an abortion. However, the “health of the mother” exception has been expanded to the point of meaninglessness, inasmuch as “health” can be defined as “being severely bummed out because I won’t fit into my prom dress.”
Re: Threat to the Life of the Mother…
If what is in the womb [the ‘product of conception’] is an innocent Human Life and aborting that child is Murder, then, even if the Mother will die if the Child is carried to term, the Child must not be sacrificed because it will still be Murder to end that Innocent Child’s Life.
Please allow me to explain:
-In the vast majority of cases, said Child is not the product of Rape, so the Mother conceived the Child of her own Free Will with all the positive and negative consequences that adhere to that decision in possible play.
The Mother in this category is responsible for her actions and, if they result in her Death so that the Child will Live, then ‘such is Life’, as the Jews say. She agreed to perform the most Sacred Act a Woman can perform, and she has a duty to fulfill the Agreement she made with The Creator and with Mankind.
-As for the Child in the womb that is the product of Rape and now the Mother’s Life is at stake: here, of course, we find ourselves in a situation where there is no ‘good’ decision, no ‘happy outcome’ possible, no avoidance of Death seemingly possible [although, Miracles, I believe, can happen].
What to do?
The Noble and Honorable thing for the Mother to do is willingly Sacrifice her Life for the sake of the Innocent Child, who did not ask to be Conceived under such violent circumstances, had no say it the event.
The Mother, at least, has had a chance to Live, to dwell for a time on this Earth, but, if we terminate the Innocent Child’s Life, we are denying that Child the Right To Life — denying the Child what the Mother has been Blessed to enjoy, even though it may turn out to have been for only a shortened time.
Also, if you believe in an Afterlife, then, surely, the Mother who makes such a Sacrifice will occupy a special place there in the Loving arms of a Merciful God.
Further, if we terminate this Innocent Human Life in order to save a Life that has had a chance to walk the Earth for a time, then, I believe, we loose a little bit of our Humanity.
We are the Guardians of that Humanity and, I believe, we must be treat it as the Sacred Gift it is, doing all that is required and necessary to preserve it’s existence.
Bob, I most assuredly do not disagree with you. I made my comment predicated upon common law, which does not impose a legal duty upon one person to sacrifice his/her life for another. Nonetheless, in my own mind, a true parent would sacrifice himself/herself for a child without hesitation.
(N.B. I do not believe that rape or incest should be an exception, for the reasons stated above. Conceding that the mother in such cases is a victim, I cannot see how the destruction of one innocent life “balances the scales” or changes the moral calculus in any way.)
One other comment regarding the “rape” exception. The problem here is the same with the “health” exception. The definition of “rape” as we know has been expanded to include simple “regret” following what would otherwise be seen as a voluntary, consensual act. I cannot abide such semantic gymnastics being used to justify murder.
I should have made clear that I wasn’t commenting in opposition to you – apologies tendered.
Your remarks promoted me to finally state a set of thoughts that had been fermenting in my mind for quite some time.
No apologies necessary. The universe is now back in balance.
: )
Bob
In Jewish law abortion is, indeed, forbidden unless the child becomes a threat to the mother’s life.
Thanks for reminding me.
When I was engaged to a Jewish Gal back in the mid-1980’s, we had some interesting discussions about that. She was a zealous Zionist as only a nineteen year old could be.
even if the Mother will die if the Child is carried to term, the Child must not be sacrificed because it will still be Murder to end that Innocent Child’s Life.
I’m sorry, but that’s just insane.
In the case of most ectopic pregnancies or when a woman has a condition that will kill her before the kid is carried to term or can be removed via Cesarean, it’s not a choice between mother and child, it’s a choice between losing one life or two.
If mom dies, so does the baby. You can terminate the fatal pregnancy or lose both people.
When the hell is it the case that you can save the baby but not the mom—and you know this ahead of time? Seriously. I’m not talking about times when mom is in an auto accident and her injuries kill her but not the baby, so you keep her artificially alive until the kid is viable.
I mean when it’s inevitable that 9 months of pregnancy WILL kill the mother but not the kid. Does that case even exist? (Actually I can think of one, to be mentioned later.)
Also, the exceptions for rape and incest (which is also rape) are to acknowledge the fact that mom had zero choice in whether to conceive. That’s not to say that abortion is morally mandatory in cases of rape, but good God Almighty, can we not be such hard-asses about this, just because abortion supporters have been so incredibly sociopathic on their part?
So this 12-year-old Yadzidi girl who was raped every day by ISIS for 11 months — in the name of Allah — if she conceives as a result, and her body is too small to safely carry to term — that’s just too damn bad? She has to die because those animals brutalized her almost to death?
What about women with severe developmental disabilities who are raped by their caretakers and who would genuinely be traumatized by pregnancy and birth?
Do you want to be that kid? Do you want to be the kid who was born from a severely disabled mother who was raped by some shit-for-brains brute? Because you WILL find out, eventually. Assuming you’re not so disabled yourself you can barely function.
What about another little girl who is raped by her father continually until she conceives at the age of nine and might die from the pregnancy because she’s just too tiny to handle it?
The Mother, at least, has had a chance to Live, to dwell for a time on this Earth,
Are youserious?
Is THAT really the calculation we’re going by? Because you’re sounding like those sociopathic “ethicists” who are trying to decide who gets a kidney transplant, or even continuing but expensive medical care.
“Sorry, you’ve lived long enough. No chemo for you.”
God is NOT on record saying that a little girl who conceives through rape and whose life is thereby endangered is obligated to sacrifice her life for the baby’s. (Let me point out that the baby would probably die with her in such a situation.)
And if he’s on record saying that rape/incest is no excuse for abortion, I’d like to see it, too.
We don’t know when “ensoulment” takes place. Be very careful about this, because as many of the sociopaths on Twitter pointed out, a LOT of fertilized eggs never implant, through no action of the mother. There are also many other spontaneous abortions that happen after implantation, because the body itself finds uterine conditions to be wrong or the fetus to be non-viable.
Does God count these incidents as lives lost?
We.
Don’t.
Know.
The problem that we’re facing with the abortion culture is the willful taking of new life for no other reason than “Oh shit, it’s blue!” It’s the fundamental devaluation of human life at its most vulnerable. It’s the obscene granting of “personhood” solely on the mother’s say-so. It’s the desire to uncouple sex from birth, converting the womb from the fountain of life into an abattoir. It’s the toxic Patriarchy narrative that says anti-abortion sentiment is fueled by the desire to control women’s sexuality.
But you know that. I don’t have to make that case here (except to ‘feets.)
Again, abortion in the case of rape/incest is not mandatory. There are felicitous outcomes even from such evil beginnings. In some cases, it might even be acceptable to encourage the mother to carry to term (but only when she’s psychologically healthy enough to take that kind of counsel). And in every case, you’d have to be morally clear about the fact that you’re taking another life.
But come on, people! There actually are some gray areas when it comes to the early stages of life. Some rare, difficult, puzzling, soul-wrenching gray areas.
And let’s remember that God can be consulted on a case-by-case basis by those who find themselves in the tough situations.
Let’s just not swing the pendulum so far the other way that we become heartless ourselves.
Are you serious?
Yes.
I’ve already provided my answer to the health exception. You answer the question, “Is it innocent human life” with respect to the rape/incest exception.
The fact of the matter is, the answer is “yes.” It is innocent. How does killing it save the mother trauma? How does it make the Yazidi girl whole?
As for the balance of it, you eloquently expressed the conundrum:
We.
Don’t.
Know.
Why then choose death over life? Indeed, that absence of knowledge argues for life as the “safe harbor.”
How does it make the Yazidi girl whole?
Because she’s 12 effing years old, and her pelvis is too small for the burden of birthing a child, her vagina has been ripped to shreds, bruised over and over for 11 months by brutal rape, and she’s so traumatized she can barely speak.
An adult male can encircle her waist with both hands. That’s a fact.
She’s so young that even a “healthy” pregnancy could burst her open in ways she just wasn’t meant to be opened. She could effing die from this, and this in addition to having been imprisoned for
eleven
months,
being raped several times a day by beasts who pray to Allah before an after mounting her, telling her that raping her brings them closer to God.
This JUST MIGHT BE a case where mercy must needs prevail over justice. Those things ARE supposed to be held in balance, you know?
Unless you’re dead serious that God is going to condemn her for aborting the child of her brutal rapists to save her own life.
Go ahead: make the case for sending her and her abortionist to hell.
Do it.
Tell me how God is such a hard-ass that he would rather a brutalized little girl die in childbirth than forgive her for terminating that one tragic conception.
Dicentra,
Reread your last four paragraphs. Then reread my comments.
Where did I speak of condemning people to Hell? Where precisely? The answer is “nowhere,” but you insist upon manufacturing a viewpoint on my part without evidence in order to avoid answering the fundamental question and in the hope that people will stop asking it.
(And BTW, your graphic hypothetical and rocks cast in my direction based thereon completely ignores my first comment above, doesn’t it? You’d rather wrap yourself in gore than acknowledge what people actually say, because it makes you feel better, I guess.)
Sorry, I’m not playing.
I ask again. How does killing one innocent life balance the scales of justice for a rape? How is killing an innocent life mercy? Why is it just, moral and merciful for person A to kill person B because person C did something evil to person A? Explain that moral calculus to me.
(BTW, some of us have had to deal with these issues in real life with people very close to us. Your strident “eff” bombs don’t faze me.)
That wasn’t Pragers best. The first point was BS because he conflates intrinsic value with having rights. I’m sorry, your dog has no rights; the dogs owner has property rights for the dog, but the dog itself has no more rights than that chicken out on my BBQ.
I can’t get with the camp that says no abortion after conception no exceptions. The idea a pregnancy must be carried to term even where
the life of the mother is threatened, or was the result of rape, seems immoral to me.
The whole key is timing. Myself, I don’t care if a woman wants an abortion because of whatever…as long as she does it before that little heart starts beating. After that, or a reasonable time frame after delayed discovery of the pregnancy, it’s infanticide.
.
I would not be surprised at many different stages of pregnancy being the line that should not be crosses depending on the person.
I could not figure out some demarcation point where the baby is human when before it was not. So, I’m stuck with not desiring to make what I consider to be murder illegal because circumstances can vary so widely.
I like the beating heart stage because it’s the point where the child starts nourishing its own development, it’s easily imagined as a living creature, and it’s far enough along where the decision can be made before it happens.
Not picking a demarcation point defaults to to the moment before delivery seems to me, at which point it’s not only murder, but murder by dismemberment. Pretty cruel stuff…
>I like the beating heart stage because it’s the point where the child starts nourishing its own development, it’s easily imagined as a living creature, and it’s far enough along where the decision can be made before it happens<
not having sex, outside of marriage, solves alot of these moral problems.
a book was written about these dilemmas.
This discussion reminds me of a discussion elsewhere about the morality of nuking the Japs at the end of dubya dubya eye eye.
‘Lo, all. Hope you don’t mind the momentary de-lurk. And a bit of bluntness. Okay, nobody should mind that part.
It always amazes me how much people can argue around abortion. Around, mind you, not about. Most people stay away from the very simple question that decides the entire issue. Pro-abortionists (can you really be called “pro-choice” when you support one person taking away every possible choice another person might ever make?) are desperate to avoid the question because it’s a loser for them, hence “women’s health” and all the other BS euphemisms and fraction-of-a-percent fringe cases. Pro-lifers (“pro-lifists”? Whatever.) are far too often caught up in the abortionist rhetoric and miss the real matter at hand. Easy to do when one side has the overwhelming support of the only media a very large portion of the country sees, but ultimately self-defeating.
Ah, right, I mentioned the one question, didn’t I? Funny thing, it isn’t even about abortion. Abortion policy is a byproduct, not the central issue. A lot of the things we like to argue about are that way, actually. Yeah, I’m just stringing you on now, so here it is: When does life begin? There are plenty of ways to phrase it, but that’s the simplest. Everything about abortion, every last thing, is answered by that question. All you have to do is answer it, then consult the laws we already have. Ignore the BS ones regarding abortion, naturally. They exist, again, to obfuscate, not clarify, and after answering the question, they aren’t needed.
Seems like there are a few people here who get it, which is awesome, but there are also some who don’t or simply have not carried the answer forward rationally. Dicentra, straw-men aside, I’m curious about your mindset. You seem to be pretty fixated on the most graphic, emotional incident you can think of, regardless of the infinitesimally small segment of abortions it would represent. Now I’m not going to say you are arguing for abortion in more circumstances, but I do note that your comments are straight out of the abortionist playbook for such arguments, to deflect towards emotionally-charged fringe cases. I also note you have expressly avoided the central issue, again from that playbook. Just observations, but they do make me curious. If it’s just coincidence that you are mouthing pro-abortion lines, by all means let me know where you stand on the real question and the massive majority of cases.
One thing that is a little more clear is that you seem to attach the rapist’s evil to the child. The way you repeatedly connect the rape and a resultant child in your arguments for abortion in those circumstances is, frankly, disturbing. It’s a quick and easy emotional argument favored by abortionists because arguing against it is so easily twisted into “punishing the victim”. Excuse me while I stomp on that dishonest tactic’s throat: Being raped has exactly no bearing on whether abortion is justified. The rapist is evil, but any child thus conceived is wholly innocent. I consider rape to be a crime worse than murder, and I believe there is no such thing as punishment too cruel for a rapist, no torture too brutal. On witnessing its results firsthand, I spent more than a little time contemplating what would be a suitable punishment for the bastard, and most people who have heard the results are understandable disturbed. I hate rapists, inhuman scum that they are, in the purest sense of the word, so understand me when I tell you that none of that carries over to a child conceived of rape. The child did nothing to deserve anyone’s enmity, and people who dishonestly try to use the natural, human responses of anger and disgust towards a rapist to push for killing that innocent child, those people piss me off.
Back to the question that answers everything, what about all the people who can’t decide on a solid answer, all the “I’m not sure”s and “maybe”s? It’s still simple. If you don’t know when life begins, which side do you want to err on? Me, I think erring on the side of not murdering an infant is preferable, but maybe I’m just weird like that. LBascom, I understand that you “like” that moment when the heart starts beating as a magical instant where something zaps a cluster of cells into a human being, but that’s just another arbitrary, feeling-based cop-out. (Side question: You don’t believe animal cruelty should be a crime? I may not have felt this was one of Prager’s best videos, but arguing animals have exactly no rights whatsoever seems like a rather extreme position to take.) What you can or can’t imagine is irrelevant, and I don’t think you honestly believe that that first heartbeat actually changes anything. You’ve just bought into the abortionist argument that you need a definite moment to pin “It’s alive!” on the new human being, so you’re grasping at straws, and a heartbeat “feels” like a pretty good one to you. You’re still thinking according to the abortionists’ rules, though. And no, “not picking a demarcation point” does not default to birth. That’s ridiculous. It would have to default to conception, the instant a group of cells (heck, a single cell) with DNA both human and unique from the mother came to be. That is the only point in time where what will become a walking, talking person goes from “does not exist” to “does exist”. Everything else is a gradual development, including for a long time after birth.
This ended up rather longer than I intended, so I’ll sum my thoughts up. “When does life begin?” is the be all, end all on the abortion debate. Answer that, and everything else works itself out. Can’t give a 100% certain answer? Then consider gun safety: One of the five rules of firearms safety (and screw anyone who claims there are only four) is “Be sure of your target and what lies beyond it”. Put another way, you do not pull that trigger unless you are 100% certain there is NOT a person between you and your bullet-stop. Not trying to kill someone isn’t enough. You have to try not to kill someone. The first is passive, but the second is active. If you’re not 100% certain that an abortion is NOT killing a human being and you argue for some arbitrary “it’s okay” point because it “feels” good, then you are telling a shooter to fire away and don’t worry if anyone is behind the target. Last, all the sob-stories and “what if”s are wonderful thought exercises, but it’s time to step up and deal with reality: Deciding overall policy on the basis of a tiny fraction of outliers is insane. A child’s father being a rapist is no excuse to murder the child, and the rare case where pregnancy threatens (honestly and imminently threatens, not “could cause complications later”) the mother’s life falls to the judgement of the mother and her medical advisers. I would hate to be involved in that decision, but it’s one of “which life do we try to save?”, not “is abortion justified?”. There is never a time when “Is abortion justified?” is the right question to ask.
Pardon the novelette, but talk of when it’s “justified” to end a human life strikes a nerve, especially when it’s couched in double-speak, appeals to emotion, and dishonesty. Back to lurkerdom with me. Probably.
My demarcation point is conception.
Hence, my problem with abortions, no matter the reason.
As to why, I could not come up with a logically coherent position for any other choice. Alternately, I could not believe I had the wisdom to draw that line. Only G-d knows, and I won’t second-guess Him.
However, I also recognize that I don’t have the wisdom to judge anyone else on the topic. I think I could more likely be wrong than be right.
So, I would encourage anyone to not have an abortion, but I am not interested in legislating against it, at least in the first trimester. Hopefully G-d will not judge me too harshly. But if He does, those are the breaks. I recognize my gross imperfection.
-I’ve been away since yesterday afternoon and I see that Shermlaw has, in a sense, acted as my Attorney [pro (Sonny) bono, of course!] – thank you.
-Cortillaen: Please come out of the lurk more often. Damn well put.
You do, indeed, ask the core question: ‘When does life begin?’
-Scientifically, physically, I do not know exactly when Life begins, so I am one of those people who believe ‘erring on the side of not murdering an infant’ [I hope that was made fairly clear by my comment on 18AUG at 0629 above].
However, I know, as a believer in God, that Life begins at Conception — of this I have no Doubt and all the Faith in the World.
-Cortillaen: May I have permission to quote from your remarks in a post I am preparing over at my site [http://thecampofthesaints.org]?
abortion is a choice some people make for whatever reason
it’s none of my business
and we’ll all float on all right
Like dust in the wind, eh?
I still don’t have to pay for it feet and at the moment I don’t care where the funding is shifted too.
I kind of think this is everybody’s business myself.
nb not safe for work, for small children, for large children, for sensitive dispositions, and most definitely not safe for consciences afloat in enui.
“I understand that you “like” that moment when the heart starts beating as a magical instant where something zaps a cluster of cells into a human being, but that’s just another arbitrary, feeling-based cop-out.•
No, you don’t understand. I didn’t just pick it arbitrarily.
I think we can all agree none but God know when life begins, so we all search ourselves and pick somewhere.
Catholics believe even using condoms is immoral. Obama believes it’s when the baby draws its first breath (I guess…). For myself, I reason we know what is dead, and life is not dead. If you are unable to achieve a heartbeat, you don’t have life. If you have a beating human heart, you have human life. At that point in a pregnency, I think it unarguable that abortion is terminating life, before that point, you can only argue potential life, and we’re back to condoms.
As for the animal cruelty question, no I don’t think it should be a crime. Maybe an infraction in certain cases, but no human should go to jail for mistreating an animal. The whole animal rights movement in this country is alien and bazaar to me, an old farm boy. I don’t want to see someone be cruel to animals, I’d call’em an asshole and not hang out with’em, but kicking a cat ain’t no crime.
I also find it amusing trying to nail down the animal people on which animals should get special rights other living creatures don’t enjoy. Unless you’re a vegan, talk to the hand.
> If you are unable to achieve a heartbeat, you don’t have life. <
the ebolba virus sez boo!
@Bob Belvedere: Thank you, and by all means feel free to use what you like. I purposefully leave God out of most of my arguments because
@LBascom: I understand just fine, thanks, and it’s still arbitrary. I’m really not trying to pick a fight about it, but you’re playing by the abortionist rules that say you must pick a point in development that a cluster of cells becomes a full-fledged human being. The entire premise is flawed, as has been demonstrated time and again with the advances of medical science. The heart does not impart anything to the human system that cannot be replicated mechanically. Not only can hearts be swapped out, artificial hearts are used regularly during those procedures. Deciding that a beating heart grants “life” status is an arbitrary decision just as is relying on birth or the first breath. You’re still fixating on a point in the continuum because of its emotional impact.
Abortionists have done an exceptional job of building the field in their advantage. The idea that “some abortion MUST be legal” is so embedded in the fabric of the discussion now that even most pro-lifers feel like they have to choose a point out of the continuum of development and attach “life” to it. If you don’t, you’re a “fundy” and “anti-science”, right? Of course, once you do, you’ve already conceded that abortion is perfectly fine sometimes, and you’re on the defensive from there, usually without even knowing exactly why. In case you’re wondering, the implication that I reject the premise of abortion ever being fine is quite accurate. Abortion is never “fine”. In extremely rare cases, it may be the only way to save one of two lives, but it is still the ending of an innocent life. The absolute best it can ever be is a tragic sacrifice, and that only rarely.
Pro-lifers, here’s the secret: We aren’t the ones who have to play that game. We don’t have to prove when life begins. The pro-abortionists do. Refuse to accept “When is abortion acceptable?” as the question they get to answer, and make them answer the “When does life begin?” they throw at us. Murder hangs in the answer, and they are the ones committing it, not us. Turn the whole game on its head and demand that they prove what they want to destroy is NOT a human life. When they can’t, ask why they don’t care if they are murdering people or not.
Side-note: Anyone ever argued with a pro-abortionist who opposes the death penalty in all circumstances? It would be comical if it weren’t so sick. “We can’t be 100% sure, so we can’t kill inmates” right alongside “Eh, kinda-sorta is good enough for babies”.
So you are saying if a rape victim takes the morning after pill that may destroy a fertilized egg, that’s murder?
Yeah, sorry, I don’t agree with that.
>So you are saying if a rape victim takes the morning after pill that may destroy a fertilized egg, that’s murder? <
yea the abortionist argument:
Hard cases make bad law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law
>So you are saying if a rape victim takes the morning after pill that may destroy a fertilized egg, that’s murder? <
personal responsibility rears its morality
What does rape have to do with it? You’re arguing from emotion, mate. Nothing good ever comes from that. It’s cliché, but emotions really do cloud our judgement and cause us to make choices that frequently turn out for the worst. History is rife with examples, especially in the last century with the advent of rapid mass-media to shape and direct those emotional impulses. I’ll have none of it. Be cold when you make the choice, and make it off what is, not what you want to be. Emotions have their place in the human existence, but trusting life-or-death decisions to emotion is foolishness.
You don’t want the victim of a heinous crime to be “punished with a baby”, a constant reminder of that time. I get it. It just doesn’t justify murdering an innocent life. I know it feels good to have that quick and easy pill to remove any chance of pregnancy, but “feels good” doesn’t equate to “is right”. If that is a human life you are destroying, is that right? Maybe it’ll suck being a parent. Maybe the parent’s life won’t go the way they want. Maybe the child won’t have a great life either. Does any of that stack up against the possibility of murdering an unborn life? Is that an acceptable risk?
Here are the facts, no emotion, just pure reason: 1) It doesn’t matter how the child was conceived. Intentional, accidental, loving, violent, none of that is the fault of the child. 2) Unless someone can prove beyond any doubt that the child is just some inhuman thing, killing it is quite possibly murder. Now, proceeding from those, my argument is that any intentional attempt to destroy a “product of conception” (AKA a baby) is unconscionable in exactly the same way as taking a shot without confirming there is nobody downrange.
To be honest, I have to fight it in my own mind sometimes. I have the urge to make decisions based on an emotional response, too. “Well, what about things that just prevent implantation of the fertilized egg? That’s gotta be fine.” No, think: Why? What makes that situation different? Implantation is no different than a first heartbeat or first breath. It’s an arbitrary point along the continuum. The only change I can definitively identify as nothing becoming something is conception. After that, you have a new entity with unique human DNA. Whether that is a “person”, I can’t say. Thankfully, I don’t have to. I don’t want to kill it, so it’s not on me to prove that killing it will not be murder.
If you think I’m being too cold about all of this, here’s why: I don’t trust lives to emotional judgements. I wouldn’t want to live with myself if I let “feels good” talk me into condoning murder, so until I can be 100% certain what is or is not a human being, I’ll keep my finger off the trigger.
@Bob Beldevere: I just noticed I forgot to go back and finish my comments to you. I was saying that I usually leave God out of the argument because it is counterproductive to bring Him in. The world we have suffices for the issue, and the simpler one can make the discussion, the better. Most pro-abortionists are oh-so-eager to jump at any whiff of religion in the mix, so I just prefer to disappoint them. I’m Christian (non-denominational Protestant), mind you, but He has given us minds capable of reason so that, like children learning to face the world without their parents, we can learn to determine right and wrong without Him needing to pass down “Thou shalt not”s on every subject.
I heart slaughterfoot!
He brings us laughter!
Cortillaen: I usually don’t bring God into this discussion subject when I discuss it with non-conservatives for pretty much the same reasons you cite. I don’t like to give the opposition any excuse to deflect the conversation.
@Cortillaen
I do not disagree with a single word of your posts. If I may humbly distill same, and with apologies to Peter Kreeft, the lack of knowledge or certainty as to what is “human” argues for always erring on the side of life. Thus the “method” of origin becomes irrelevant.
If you would call it life if you found it on Mars then I think you can call it life here on Earth.
Not, Bgbear, if it is not a Human [sentient] Life.
Cortillaen, you keep asserting I am arguing from emotion is like a fish calling me wet.
Your hysterics about potential life being more important than existing life is why your brand of so called pro-life gets no where. Self righteous condescension don’t win many allies.
I have used reason and logic for the point I believe human life should be legally recognized, as well as one that is possible to sway others to accept. YOU use emotion to assert once the seed has been spilled there’s no going back. The chances of gaining converts with that argument are slim and none. Your all or nothing approach makes me think you are less concerned with preventing abortions than with displaying moral superiority.
Not to pick a fight, but:
Since when is a line of reasoning followed to it’s logical conclusion hysterical? If anything Cortillaen has been cool as a lobotomized, libidoless Vulcan suffering from whatever version of Asperger’s Vulcans suffer from.
Tuoquoque on the other hand. That’s my kids fighting.
The problem with the beating heart stage as a point of legal demarcation is that it begins (3-4 weeks) earlier than we can detect it (about 6 wks).
Or so a quick google search tells me.
Now, as a practical matter, I can accept 3-4 weeks, since that would eliminate well over (wild guestimate) 90% of abortions because it would make non-therapuetic abortion all but impossible.
As a matter of logic however, life begins at conception. Any legal demarcation is by definition arbitrary. That doesn’t mean the demarcation is illogical or random, though.
“Since when is a line of reasoning followed to it’s logical conclusion hysterical?”
About the time my line of reasoning was characterized as emotional.
As a practical matter , a legal matter, I’m talking a detectable heartbeat. 10 weeks if that’s what it is.
As a logical matter, I don’t see the prevention of a fertilized egg developing a functioning heart the same as stopping a functioning heart.
As a political matter, if you want to roll back abortions then it is neither practical or logical to insist there’s no difference between the morning after pill and late term abortion. Do you want to prevent 80-90% of abortions, especially the heinous second and third trimester verity, or do you want to continue the all or nothing strategy indefinitely?
[…] the Comments section of a post by Darleen Click on the whole Abortion issue, Shermlaw […]
Above I reversed the question to find the answer, legally speaking. I’ll expand on that.
Say a woman finds her (dead) husband slumped in his easy chair, unresponsive, and calls 911. The EMP arrives and sees a man laying there. What is the first thing he does to determine whether or not this mass of human cells is alive?
After finding no pulse, and after their attempts to start the heart fail, he is declared not alive, he’s dead. Then this human (for that’s what the corpse is) is put in a hole and returns to the dust from whence he came.
Logically, human tissue is not alive if the heart is not beating, and practically that is where the legal definition should be. IMHO. I would say fixing life at the moment a sperm attaches to an egg is the more emotional argument.
I was thinking more about the “clump of cells” argument than living organism in general.
As a practical matter , a legal matter, I’m talking a detectable heartbeat. 10 weeks if that’s what it is.
It’s around 8 according to the same quick google search.
But here’s the thing: If a baby is alive when the heart starts beating, and the heart starts beating at 3 to 4 weeks, then the baby is alive for 4 or 5 weeks before we even know it; but believing it’s okay to kill a baby by pretending we don’t know it’s alive because we can’t hear the beating heart is arbitrary.
I see it as the breached egg is still completely the woman’s body, if she wants to expell the sperm, egg and all, it’s no ones business. But when the baby’s heart starts beating, now you have another human life inside, undeniably.
I wonder at conservatives being unable to use incrementalism like the left, and if that’s why the ratchet effect only goes one way. Obviously it’s due to the left having no principles, but is having dogmatic principles better? You know…politically speaking.
Ernst, call it arbitrary, I’m looking for a legal definition that has a chance of success.
You can’t base law on undetectable. If her doctor can’t detect a heartbeat, he can remove the empregnated egg. If a second heartbeat is detected then he cant.
It’s only half her body. Genetically the other half is the sperm donor’s, making it unique.
I said I could live with the beating heart standard. As long as we’re talking 3-4 weeks instead of 6 to 8. But I’m not kidding myself that it’s not alive before then.
She might not even know she’s pregnent at 3-4 weeks.
I’m not kidding myself the standard will ever be changed to the first trimester, let alone what I propose. I’m pretty sure though a campaign of “Stop a Heart, End a Life” would gain more support than “If a sperm slips through, voluntarily or not, you’re a mom.”