The War on Planned Parenthood.

[Peteyandjia]

"they aren't" because potential humans aren't humans and to conflate living cells with the implied "life" as something for moral consideration is ridiculous.

You are living cells.

 

[Helden]

You are living cells.

So was the mole on the back of my shoulder.. I guess I should be charged with MURDER when I had it burnt off with dry ice

 

[Peteyandjia]

So was the mole on the back of my shoulder.. I guess I should be charged with MURDER when I had it burnt off with dry ice

Except that we didn't all used to be a mole on someone's shoulder.

 

[MilesAbove]

The real deflection is in pretending you somehow know the exact moment when a person becomes a person... without being able to actually back that up with anything scientific.

A human becomes a person when they are autonomous, can utilize rudimentary reasoning, and can utilize ethical consideration (on a basic level). Which is why it's so important that we always specify "human rights" and not "persons' rights". Human and potential person would fit all the biological markers of a human, with the prefrontal cortex and frontal portion developed and operating, as that is where metacognition is stored. So..... there ya go.

 

[Helden]

Except that we didn't all used to be a mole on someone's shoulder.

And that matters because? Human rights are given based on where on the human body the tiny lump of cells grew?

 

[MilesAbove]

Depending on what spot you look in history, there was a time when people said the same thing about blacks/gays/jews/insert persecuted group here. Evolution takes time I suppose.

Did you just compare africans/gay/jewish etc.... with zygotes, pre-formed cells, and under-developed fetuses? Next question: Are you fucking insane? So you see an oak, a redwood, an elm, and a pine seed....

 

[catchwrestle1]

Unless you're holding a PhD in Logic or Philosophy you will have a hard time helping me or my masters in philosophy (with a minor in biology) figure anything new out.

I really wouldn't care which side you're on. You can't recognize a moral parameter that provides a distinction for a valid argument for abortion rights by negating the "human" consideration from a fetus in a logical manner.

This is the continual problem. People pretend to understand how to debate while not having spent at least a couple years at University learning the difference between a strong/weak, valid/sound/invalid/unsound argument.

The fact you keep asking for "sound" while talking about moral arguments is a huge tell of your novice status. With my Kantian-based deontological lean, I would argue there can be sound arguments in morality; however, I can only do so after admitting I have to assume his axioms of ethics and morality (ignoring subjectivists and so forth). I have to ignore those who oppose a objective moral framework. I'd also have quite a difficult time arguing pro-abortion while holding to Kantian standards.... unless I provide the same argument I gave to you. And even if I do, someone who is a hardline Kantian would certainly compile a logical argument against me, based on what I could only assume would be his imperatives. But against I'd argue that the potential vs actualized would allow the argument to hold with his values.

BUt that's just for him. We could go about 30 different directions, right? You wanna go Hume? You wanna get confused as fuck with some Hegel? Let's just jump to Peter Singer and get into a vegan argument while we're at it.


So let's go back to my point and I'll form the conclusion in a normative claim: Abortions; given within a legal timeframe and with due diligence of assuring safety, is moral. It is such because the fetus does not meet the requirement of human, and certainly not the requirement of "person". It has the potential for both, but no assured course to accomplish either. Thus, it remains equivalent to a sperm or egg insofar as it's status as potential and not actualized human-ness or person-ness. Since we do not provide human right (nor persons' right) to either sperm or egg, we ought not provide one to the fetus. To do so would be to equate an inconsistency in potential vs actualization; and would render our position unreasonable.

In fact, logic was a field of study of mine, for several years. I would respectfully say we are passing the limits of purely logical argument and meeting on more philosophical terms. I didn't anticipate this riposte when I previously dispensed with logical terms, such as 'sound'. Had I known we had a serious logician here, I would've couched my thoughts more appropriately.

Honestly, I didn't think anybody would hold me to the strictest literal definition of 'sound'.

This is worth explaining, I suppose, and I appreciate your response. I can expound on my initial proposition for the purpose of levity and good-sportsmanship, if nothing else.

I'm not going to bother with a purely logical explanation, but it should be strong, nonetheless. You're certainly smart enough. So I'll explain my position using a loose, rambling format, native to those of admittedly unsound mind.

In the United States, it is illegal to take a human life. Therefore, abortion is illegal because it requires the taking of human life.

The inconsistency here is what always bothers me. The legal system will tell us what is actually a 'human life' and what is just a gelatinous globule of 'kinetic human'. (Surely you see these definitions as arbitrary and contradictory like me? Why or why not?)

In purely metaphysical terms, human life begins when the female egg has been fertilized by a male sperm. This actually is the literal definition of conception. The spark of life, as it were, occurs at that moment. The proximal cause of human life is this encounter between these two separate physical entities; the sperm, and the egg, neither of which would ever give rise to human life by itself. That is the condition that must be met in order to qualify as human, or 'potential' human to be more precise.

These are the words of a leading geneticist :

The fertilized ovum. Of the hundreds of sperm surviving the swim upstream to the oocyte, one jettisons its tail and nuzzles inside the much larger cell, which becomes an ovum, completing its own meiosis. A fertilized ovum = conception.

At this point, harming the egg is tantamount to killing a human being, assuming the requisite intent. I don't particularly care, because as I said, I don't believe human life is intrinsically valuable. But in government, which defines our rights for us (legally, at least), it is quickly accepted when they make a swooping claim that a fertilized egg isn't 'legally' human before approximately 24 weeks of age. It's quite callous, actually.

You must recognize the capriciousness of the government's position. It is foolish to expect the government to be consistent morally, to be fair, but it is quite infuriating to imagine a man could be put to death for fatally shooting a 100-year-old person with a terminal illness, with the intent to stop suffering; yet at the same time be paid a handsome salary for fatally stabbing, with the express intent to do grievous harm to, a 22-week-old human. You could stab them daily in the brain stem for 20 years and be well-paid and well-liked within modern society. There are some inherent issues with this characterization, yet in both cases a human was murdered, and a human life taken.

In the end I suppose it's more of a legal issue, and my fervent disagreement with the way governments use terms like 'human rights' so loosely. Not all humans have rights in this country. If you're a human under 24-weeks-old, you're fair game. No rights are there to protect you.

I would appreciate moral consistency on people's part. Everyone will pretend to care about children, but they'll only care as far as the government says they have to. Once unprotected by governmental policy, human fetuses have absolutely no moral value to our society, and can be destroyed without compunction.

The following proposition seems valid to me.

a) We value human life.
b) Most fertilized eggs will become healthy human lives.

Therefore : We should value fertilized eggs because we value human life.

This is an argument of preposterous dimensions, of course, and life is itself difficult to define, in some cases. Naturally, it is complicated. But if we are going to protect human life, we should protect it in all forms - or dispense with the frivolities and admit that we, as a collective, are capable of being horrendously barbaric. It can be quite an unpleasant truth.

As a whole, our society has legalized the killing of the most defenseless form of human life. And that is a massive moral failing, in my opinion.

 

[hillelslovak87]

Depending on what spot you look in history, there was a time when people said the same thing about blacks/gays/jews/insert persecuted group here. Evolution takes time I suppose.

Terrible example. Everyone agrees that birth is the rubicon in which a life is truly a life. Black people and jews were not conceptions unrealized........

 

[AviatorShades]

So was the mole on the back of my shoulder.. I guess I should be charged with MURDER when I had it burnt off with dry ice

I'm not a pro-lifer but this nihilistic "then my bunion is a person" argument has always seemed like silly pursuit of shock value. You can reduce all of biology to mundane materialistic blobs. We blobs classify and attribute value to other blobs based on their developmental potential.

More people would "come around" if we focused on the realities of inverse IQ/birth rate and how painlessly terminating a life in its earliest stages -- a difficult decision -- might be the right course of action if its future is completely devoid of potential. For some reason that's very taboo, but comparing that life to snot and turds isn't.

 

[Farmer Br0wn]

And the response comes back... they aren't human beings or alive so you are trying to save something that doesn't exist.

This is a common tactic used by those who support abortion. The failed attempt to redefine and relabel the problem away.


The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. -Confucius

Some people think that if you just don't call it a baby, then it's somehow okay to murder your own child in the womb.

Calling the aborted baby anything else other then a baby is also a coping mechanism for people who have aborted their own children. If they fail to properly identify their actions in their own mind, then they never have to psychologically confront the reality of what they did.

 

[tdluxon]

This is a common tactic used by those who support abortion. The failed attempt to redefine and relabel the problem away.


The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. -Confucius

Some people think that if you just don't call it a baby, then it's somehow okay to murder your own child in the womb.

Calling the aborted baby anything else other then a baby is also a coping mechanism for people who have aborted their own children. If they fail to properly identify their actions in their own mind, then they never have to psychologically confront the reality of what they did.

My definitions and labels for these terms are every bit as valid as yours (and vice versa) so nobody is failing at anything.

Just to make you feel better, I'm a guy so I'm not gonna be getting an abortion anyways.

BTW- Confucius has been dead over 1500 years, and even if he was alive, he's just a person, one of billions, he doesn't know everything

 

[Denter]

And that matters because? Human rights are given based on where on the human body the tiny lump of cells grew?

How are human rights given anyway?

 

[MilesAbove]

In fact, logic was a field of study of mine, for several years. I would respectfully say we are passing the limits of purely logical argument and meeting on more philosophical terms. I didn't anticipate this riposte when I previously dispensed with logical terms, such as 'sound'. Had I known we had a serious logician here, I would've couched my thoughts more appropriately.

Honestly, I didn't think anybody would hold me to the strictest literal definition of 'sound'.

This is worth explaining, I suppose, and I appreciate your response. I can expound on my initial proposition for the purpose of levity and good-sportsmanship, if nothing else.

I'm not going to bother with a purely logical explanation, but it should be strong, nonetheless. You're certainly smart enough. So I'll explain my position using a loose, rambling format, native to those of admittedly unsound mind.

In the United States, it is illegal to take a human life. Therefore, abortion is illegal because it requires the taking of human life.

The inconsistency here is what always bothers me. The legal system will tell us what is actually a 'human life' and what is just a gelatinous globule of 'kinetic human'. (Surely you see these definitions as arbitrary and contradictory like me? Why or why not?)

In purely metaphysical terms, human life begins when the female egg has been fertilized by a male sperm. This actually is the literal definition of conception. The spark of life, as it were, occurs at that moment. The proximal cause of human life is this encounter between these two separate physical entities; the sperm, and the egg, neither of which would ever give rise to human life by itself. That is the condition that must be met in order to qualify as human, or 'potential' human to be more precise.

These are the words of a leading geneticist :


At this point, harming the egg is tantamount to killing a human being, assuming the requisite intent. I don't particularly care, because as I said, I don't believe human life is intrinsically valuable. But in government, which defines our rights for us (legally, at least), it is quickly accepted when they make a swooping claim that a fertilized egg isn't 'legally' human before approximately 24 weeks of age. It's quite callous, actually.

You must recognize the capriciousness of the government's position. It is foolish to expect the government to be consistent morally, to be fair, but it is quite infuriating to imagine a man could be put to death for fatally shooting a 100-year-old person with a terminal illness, with the intent to stop suffering; yet at the same time be paid a handsome salary for fatally stabbing, with the express intent to do grievous harm to, a 22-week-old human. You could stab them daily in the brain stem for 20 years and be well-paid and well-liked within modern society. There are some inherent issues with this characterization, yet in both cases a human was murdered, and a human life taken.

In the end I suppose it's more of a legal issue, and my fervent disagreement with the way governments use terms like 'human rights' so loosely. Not all humans have rights in this country. If you're a human under 24-weeks-old, you're fair game. No rights are there to protect you.

I would appreciate moral consistency on people's part. Everyone will pretend to care about children, but they'll only care as far as the government says they have to. Once unprotected by governmental policy, human fetuses have absolutely no moral value to our society, and can be destroyed without compunction.

The following proposition seems valid to me.

a) We value human life.
b) Most fertilized eggs will become healthy human lives.

Therefore : We should value fertilized eggs because we value human life.

This is an argument of preposterous dimensions, of course, and life is itself difficult to define, in some cases. Naturally, it is complicated. But if we are going to protect human life, we should protect it in all forms - or dispense with the frivolities and admit that we, as a collective, are capable of being horrendously barbaric. It can be quite an unpleasant truth.

As a whole, our society has legalized the killing of the most defenseless form of human life. And that is a massive moral failing, in my opinion.

Alright first of all, we just became best friends because you're able to further discourse.... a true rarity outside of tight-knit debate and intellectual circles in my general area. And we're on Sherdog, so I'm not setting the bar at fully flushed boolean logic equations or anything of that sort, obviously (nor should you). So no worries there. This is a ramble forum, to be sure.

Second, I'm still going to hold you to your error in assumption that at conception = human life because you noted "most fertilized eggs". An approx 50% of pregnancy ends up in miscarriage, and while I do not utilize this as a "that's why we should allow abortion", it does weaken your argument for "most fertilized eggs", as this is just natural basic miscarriage.

You also utilize a false equivocation and red herring of the inconsistency of government morality with the 100-year-old murder victim. Not only is this nowhere cohesive to my stance, but the 100-year-old person is just that.... a person. My position is that the fetus is not a person, nor can it be described as human (bearing in mind that I do believe there is a "too late to abort" threshhold, as does our government barring any health concerns for the mother).

To be wholly honest you're going to fall very short at your initial claim when arguing against my point: Human Life cannot be taken, and Fetus is a human life. Also, not to get knit-picky but you appealed to authority after your assumption.... but to be fair I utilized a fallacy in my own construct so we'll call it even. .

As I have stated, it is a potential human life, and holds the same potential as a sperm and an egg. So until you can actualize the fetus as human (which I would assert you cannot) and separate it from it's potential status, your argument remains impotent (no pun intended). More important, and what the governmental moral standard is: Impeding on the mother, who is certainly a human and a person, for the sake of a potential human and person, is inconsistent with human rights.

While brevity has now been lost and I truly must start work, I'll point again to the cake analogy once again. You have a combination of ingredients, and when them together is when you can create a cake. This is the requirement of a cake, in fact, and each ingredient alone cannot produce the cake. However, this batter is only a potential cake. If you place it in the oven for, say two minutes, and then remove the batter.... it is not a cake still. There is no cake. There is batter, "aborted". Now surely I have conflated the complexity of human biology quite a bit, but at the very least, even if you do not agree, you can likely grasp my argument.


Now, since we've found our crux of disagreement, let me divulge my stance on abortion: I believe society is woefully uneducated on this matter. I believe it is a serious issue that deserves proper education. Women and men should not be flippant about it, nor should it be an automatic option for an unwanted child. However I find in many cases of its use, it is a positive option that allows the flourishing of the actor's life as well as the life of his/her immediate family and loved ones. I find careless abortions to be a true outlier statistic and which can be lessened with proper education. As someone that volunteers with at-risk youth, I have had the misfortune/fortune of sitting with young men and women on 4 different occasions when unwanted pregnancy was a reality. Twice it was due to rape/sexual assault. Once it was carelessness between two people who did not really know each other. Once it was a couple who had been dating for years. In all cases I discussed with each of them the options, and noted abortion as one such option. Only once was there a conversation about as an "almost necessary" option. Never was it considered an easy choice or a wanted result.

 

[lifelessheap]

Why not ?

I don't think some people want their tax dollars being spent on murdering the most innocent.

 

[MilesAbove]

I don't think some people want their tax dollars being spent on murdering the most innocent.

See, you did that thing again where you assumed "human" and "person" onto a potential and not an actual. "They" are neither innocent or guilty because they do not fit the criteria of being judged at all.

And when you say they don't want tax dollars going to kill the innocent, I sure hope you utilize that argument for bombings, wars, and so forth. Because I don't want my tax dollars going to that. But I'm not such a self-important prick that I think I get to decide what my tax dollars go to in the macro sense.

 

[palerider500]

So was the mole on the back of my shoulder.. I guess I should be charged with MURDER when I had it burnt off with dry ice

That you cannot tell the difference between a "mole" and an actual HUMAN BEING speaks to your level of intelligence.

 

[palerider500]

A human becomes a person when they are autonomous, can utilize rudimentary reasoning, and can utilize ethical consideration (on a basic level). Which is why it's so important that we always specify "human rights" and not "persons' rights". Human and potential person would fit all the biological markers of a human, with the prefrontal cortex and frontal portion developed and operating, as that is where metacognition is stored. So..... there ya go.

Everything you said right here is flat out WRONG!!!

 

[palerider500]

And that matters because? Human rights are given based on where on the human body the tiny lump of cells grew?

No, human rights is based on giving human rights to every living human being. This isn't rocket science.

 

[palerider500]

Did you just compare africans/gay/jewish etc.... with zygotes, pre-formed cells, and under-developed fetuses? Next question: Are you fucking insane? So you see an oak, a redwood, an elm, and a pine seed....

HE is correct and YOU are wrong. He is absolutely correct. At one point in history, blacks were not considered to be human beings just like unborn humans are not today. The comparison is apt and DOES apply.

The only one insane here is YOU and your refusal to acknowledge facts, reason, or COMMON SENSE.

And yes, an oak IS a tree for all of the obtuse thinkers out there.

 

[palerider500]

Terrible example. Everyone agrees that birth is the rubicon in which a life is truly a life. Black people and jews were not conceptions unrealized........

GREAT example. Everyone once knew that the earth was flat as well. What the majority of a society "thinks" is irrelevant because most of society do not know HOW to think in the first place.