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Bob Moore said:Excuse me. I don't want to offend, but that is complete claptrap. You somehow see virtue in refusing to defend innocent life. Apparently the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' have no place in you. What you have said is that although you wouldn't do murder, you have no problem if someone else does.
And 'pro-choice' is semantically equivalent to 'pro-abortion'. If you are not against murder, then you are for it. There is no tenable middle ground.
transientlife said:I quite disagree. I'm not debating if the fetus is living or not. And we do have the choice to murder an individual outside the womb, it's more or less the exercising of that choice. Most people CHOOSE not to kill others because of the repercussions and/or individual's morals. You completely missed the point I was trying to make in the post, but oh well. To each our own. I choose to let individuals decide for themselves and let them deal with the consequences...not impose my morals and ethics on those who may not share the same. It's their body, their kid (or not, depending) and none of my business.
transientlife said:I don't agree with you, either. But you have the right to your own opinion, as do I. I am not refusing to defend innocent life, I am more concerned about other people butting in to someone's personal decision. There is right and there is wrong, but I do think there IS gray area in some matters. I do think abortion isn't the best idea, but far be it from me to force someone else to see it that way.
transientlife said:I did not say anything was gray ABOUT MURDER, I said in SOME MATTERS. What you are missing is that I'm not focusing on the right and wrong of abortion, I am focusing on the judgment of it and the inability of some to mind their own business. Unless it's your fetus, I think it's no one else's business what you do. You don't want strangers telling you how to raise your kid, why would you want them telling you what to do in that situation either? And if my brother or whoever aborted their kid, I can't prejudge on how I'd feel about it , because I've not experienced it, but it'd be their kid, not mine, therefor NOT my decision. You are obviously pro-life, and I am pro choice (which is not semantics for pro abortion, that's just ridiculous) and welcome to YOUR opinion. I understand and respect the ability to want to protect life, but I also respect the idea of FREE WILL and choice. But if you cannot understand what I am trying to say then we are on two different wavelengths.
jazzbird said:Abortion is murder, and you say it is gray. That's all I was commenting on.
Obviously you do not view the fetus within the womb as you do a child. They do not have the same rights in your mind.
This is a forum for debate. There is no need for you to become all defensive when people disagree with you. And I didn't call you pro-abortion - I try to respect others by using the term pro-choice, though some pro-choicers on here freely label me as "anti-choice" - which I am not.
transientlife said:I was lumping the pro-abortion line in with a post from Bob Moore, not yourself, sorry for the confusion there, and I wouldn't refer to any prolifer as antichoice.
Yes, it is very easy to be misunderstood and to misunderstand over a computer screen - especially over issues like this.transientlife said:I do see and respect your points, and don't think it (abortion) is right, but I still hold to freewill and choice. That's all. Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what you mean and how you want to say it on here.
elivi said:Jazzbird,
Respectfully, I disagree that if you are "pro-choice" you are pro-abortion. I used to be pro-choice but thought abortion was deplorable. I have since been "educated" to know better.
On the other hand, I would agree that Planned Parenthood and the likes are pro-abortion. I have spoken to former employees of the organization about how they were taught to "coach" women into agreeing to abortions, even pressuring them when they clearely were unsure, didn't want to, etc.
Again, how many women agree to abortions because parents, or boyfriends, etc are pressuring them to abort? I think most women do not want to do this. Makes you wonder whose choice is being protected here?
Your "unique" DNA = humanity equation doesn't work. According to this definition identical twins, triplets and quads aren't human because they aren't "unique" (their DNA is IDENTICAL). There is more that goes into making a PERSON unique than their DNA and that is all the experiences and memories that they acquire. Or are you now going to tell me that all identical siblings aren't also unique individuals unto themselves, despite the fact that their DNA is identical?jazzbird said:The problem with your arguement here is that the 46 chromosomes of the fetus is new and unique. So, I have cells in my body with 46 chromosomes, so what? Don't you find your illustration of the appendix just a bit hyperbolic, and yes, even silly.
I remind you that your definition of humanity is those 46 chromosomes. Therefore. ALL the CELLS in that appendix are human beings according to that definition. I wasn't talking about the appendix as a unit, but that is a strawman stuffed by you to avoid the FACT that the CELLS of that appendix would be classed a human beings by the DNA definition.jazzbird said:We all know very well that your appendix is what it is: an appendix - one part of your body which is made to function in a specific way. It does not become something other than what it is: an appendix. It never can become a new and unique human being on it's own. So you argue that it can be used to clone a human being. So, what if it can? It isn't a human being. It's raw material. /snip rest of strawman/
I NEVER separated personhood from humaness... AGAIN that is a strawman of YOUR own stuffing and I challenge you to quote me where I ever said any such thing.jazzbird said:You cannot seperate humanness from personhood. They are synonymous. /SNIP rest of strawman now repeated TWICE by jazzbird)
First, you will have to define what you mean by "life".jazzbird said:You admit that life begins at conception because you cannot deny that whatever it is inside the woman is indeed alive, so the only arguement you have left is that of personhood.
Hopefully you will see the problem with what I call the "life begins at conception and "DNA = humanity" anti-choice arguments. Even theologians realize that these arguments are on the way out. I can see why anti-choicers are do dead set against embryonic cell research and cloning considering that these technology gut these arguments. That is why I think that development is the determining factor here (the personhood argument).....Besides the unaccustomed idea of generating human oocytes in the laboratory, Dr. Schöler's research points to another anomaly: the oocytes can develop in a dish into embryos, a process that involves a spontaneous doubling of their own genetic material instead of acquiring a second set of chromosomes from a sperm. Dr. Schöler said he has not yet had time to test whether the mouse oocytes and embryos are viable or whether human embryonic stem cells behave in the same way.
These developments have surprised theologians accustomed to defining human life as something that starts at conception with the union of oocyte and sperm. "This scientific research is like a cannon ball fired across the bow of Christian bioethics," Dr. Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley said in a statement.
Dr. Peters added in an interview that ethicists in the past had thought human dignity could be seen to derive from the fertilization process. But mammalian cloning was the first shot at this argument and Dr. Scholer's generation of parthenogenetic embryos "is maybe the second shot," he said.
You said it IF "life begins at conception" (really meaningless phrase).jazzbird said:So you argue that one does not become a person until some certain point. What precisely is that magical point when a being that is made from other humans becomes a human being and a person, instead of a mere, though living, blob of tissue that you call human but not a human being? If life begins at conception, how can anyone arbitrarily decide when it is a human being?
I remind you that you have YET to establish that a person is in FACT being murdered. All you do is assert it. Where are your facts establishing that a human being IN FACT exists from the moment of conception?jazzbird said:This is a non-issue. It's not a legitimate arguement for abortion because you are making no distinction between spontaneous death and murder.
Abortion should be an option to an unwanted pregnancy up until the 20th week (90% usually occur before the 12 week and only 1% occur after the 20th week). The reason for choosing this "cut-off" (really nearly a month earlier than any preemie can survive) is given in Post #127. If a drug like RU-486 were readily available then most abortions could be done very safety without surgery before the 7th week. The RU-486 regime could be done in the privacy of any doctor's office (all he/she need to know is how to use it). In France, where this drug has been available for 2 decades, the cut-off for a legal abortion has been set at 12 weeks. Please spare me the usual lying anti-choicer scare stories about RU-486.jazzbird said:I was wondering, Gladiatrix, to what extent you support abortion? Is there a certain timeline or do you believe a woman should be able to have one at any time during her pregnancy? Just wondering...
Malakar said:So how do feel about abortion? I want to hear logical argument for or against the matter. I already know about what the Bible says, so please don't mention that in your post.
So you don't believe that it is a person from the very beginning? Just wanting to clarify.mark kennedy said:Everything that defines a human being is evident within weeks. I'm not sure where I would place to point where the fetus becomes a child but there is no reason to conclude that this is not a person after the first trimester. It will change and grow but that does not disqualify it as a person. It is not only viable at the 12th week it has every vital function by which we define personhood. I'm going to try to be clear at this point, once every vital function is intact it is a person. This whole process involves no more then 12 weeks in my estimation. It must be considered conscious when the brain starts functioning, I think that this is done well within the 12 weeks of the first trimester.
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