I don't know if they don't have the ability to think, but I do think they can feel pain, and other feelings. But just because they do not have these abilities doesn't make it alright to kill them.
I disagree that the ability to feel pain is the source of rights. We ascribe the notion of "rights" to an entity which needs to perform certain actions in order to survive on this planet. Certainly, a pregnant woman needs to perform certain actions in order to survive (eat food, drink water, breathe oxygen, etc.), but a fetus needn't perform any such actions.
The reason why we respect an entity's rights is because it is in our best interest to do so. It is not necessarily in the best interests of a pregnant woman to continue to allow a fetus to develop inside her. Since it is not possible for the rights of one person to trample over the rights of another, and since the pregnant woman retains sovereign control over her own body (which, after all, is part of her property), she has the right to dictate whether the fetus inside her is to benefit from the nutrients in her bloodstream.
Disagree. There are safer, better alternatives to abortion if the mother is unable to support the child, A main one being ADOPTION.
A woman may have reasons besides being unable to support a baby, for having an abortion. There are a great many health problems that a woman may suffer during pregnancy. It is even possible that she may die during childbirth (fortunately a remote, but still potential, possibility). We certainly don't have the right to command a woman to risk her life against her will, regardless of whether anyone else's life depends on such a risk.
Another one being abstinence. If you don't want a kid, don't have sex. It's that simple.
Unlike lesser animals, there are reasons why people have sex besides procreation. Sex is the way two people express their love for each other. It is certainly possible that two people would want to express their love without wishing to conceive a child. To dictate that two people should not have sex is to cripple their relationship--unnecessarily, in my opinion.
Disagree. Here we have a different opinion of what a human being is. I realize you are atheist, so I'm not going to argue whether they are created by God in His image or not because it is futile. But I will say that I believe abortion is murder, everyone deserves the chance to live, and just because it doesn't look like a fully grown human being doesn't mean its not a human being. It may just be a clump of cells to you, but to me, it is a life.
Even if a fetus is a human being (a point that I will not argue, because I am uninterested in arguing semantics), and even if it has all of the rights that you and I do, it
still does not have the right to force a woman to donate blood to it, any more than you or I do. A fetus most certainly does not possess rights in excess of any other human being (mere helplessness does not grant it any additional rights).
If you are saying it is "up to the mother alone to decide to have the abortion" then I agree. It is not the doctor's decision, nor anyone elses.
At last, a point upon which we can agree.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here...but if someone staying in my house is causing problems for me or my family, I have the right to make him leave.
The person to whose comment you were replying was attempting to draw an analogy between a woman's uterus and a person's house. Just as the owner of a house has the right to remove those who he does not wish to occupy it, a woman also has the right to remove from her uterus those who she does not wish to occupy it--an apt analogy.
Well, a baby cannot feed itself, so it relies on the mothers body to live...a fully grown man can walk to the store and buy food.. ...I'm not sure I'm seeing your point, here.
I admit that this analogy was flawed, and you have demonstrated the flaw. It is true that the fetus cannot survive on its own, while a fully grown man can. The point that I make with this comment is that we have no right to compel a woman to sustain the life of a fetus against her will, despite anyone's attempt to minimize the impact the fetus has on the woman's health.
Innocent? None of us are innocent, we all are sinful beings. God DOES care about life, but he cannot stand evil..I used to think God was a real jerk for what he did in the OT, and I still don't fully understand WHY he did it...but a lot of people in those times were trying to hurt God's people and rebel against them in the OT with their sinfulness. I've heard people refer to this as "The Greater Good". God's ways are not our ways, but He knows what is best for us in the future.
You wrote above, "I'm not going to argue whether they are created by God in His image or not because it is futile", but now you
do argue that "God does care about life"? I understand that this is a Christian forum (it says so in my browser's address bar, after all), but if you fall back on the Christian justification for depriving a pregnant woman ownership of her own body, why are we debating a pregnant woman's right to abortion in the first place?
