Rationalia Abortion Thread (A New Start)

[Seth]

It's indisputable because it has been proven beyond any doubt by scientific investigation that the organism that is created by the alignment of the maternal and paternal chromosomes of two human beings within a fertilized human egg is entirely comprised of human DNA and it is in fact a new, living, presently single-celled organism beginning development into a fully-developed human being.

You obviously don't know the meaning of the word indisputable. Would you like to give us YOUR definition?

As far as I'm concerned, a fetus is a POTENTIAL human being.

I'm not responsible for your inability or unwillingness to acknowledge simple scientific truths.

A fertilised human egg is not a human being to most people.

And that changes scientific fact how, precisely? What "most people" believe is that God exists. Does that mean God exists? However, let's assume that you are correct for a moment. If "most people" come to believe that a fertilized human egg is a human being, will you concede that this makes it so?

Even you called it a single celled organism. You need to make your mind up. Is it a human being, or a single celled organism?

It is a single cell of an organism in development of the species homo sapiens sapiens. What else do you think it is?

When a baby dies shortly after it's born, people say it only lived X hours.
They don't say it lived 9 months and X hours.

Ignorance of the laws of science is no excuse.

[Seth]

And what gives the state the right to control this baby or fetus inside the mom? It's not a citizen until it has a birth certificate. Inside, it is under the woman's jurisdiction. Her survival goes first. She might have 5 other mouths to feed.

The state has the same authority to control the baby as it does to control the mother or anyone else, according to socialist doctrine. Whether or when the fetus becomes a "citizen" is, of course, an entirely political matter subject (according to socialist doctrine) to the control and consent of the collective in the interests of the collective. That's the nature of "democracy" according to all of the socialist arguments ever made here. In socialist theory all "rights" are granted by the state and therefore are creatures of the state and subject to apportionment and revocation by the state according to the democratically expressed will of the collective.

Do you dispute this?

No? I didn't think so.

Therefore, if the state decides that it is in the interests of the collective to forbid abortion, and the collective authorizes the state to enforce that decision, then the wishes or desires of the mother are irrelevant. The state may have many reasons for asserting control of the woman's reproductive system including, at it's most basic level, the need of the collective to maintain it's population and workforce, which may require it to assert authority over the reproductive choices and activities of the individual members of the collective in the interests of the survival and prosperity of the collective.

This condition occurs because socialist theory discounts the existence of pre-existing, natural, unalienable rights that accrue to any individual of the collective that may be asserted and enforced against the democratic will of the majority because all rights and privileges emanate from the democratic will of the majority.

We have a constitution. Nowhere in the constitution are fetuses, let alone black people mentioned. Fetuses and slaves had no rights. You need an amendment to give fetuses at 20 weeks, or whatever point, the rights of citizenship.

And is a "constitution" a scientific principle or a set of laws and principles created by the mind of man? How does a "constitution" amend scientific facts, pray tell?

If the "constitution" is changed so that it extends the full protections of adulthood and citizenship to the human zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus or infant, will you concede that this is within the authority of the "constitution" to enforce?

[mistermack]

Even you called it a single celled organism. You need to make your mind up. Is it a human being, or a single celled organism?

It is a single cell of an organism in development of the species homo sapiens sapiens. What else do you think it is?

Your refusal to answer IS an answer.

The usual trolling answer.
Because that's the question at the essence of the debate. Is a single fertilised cell a human being?
Your cowardly evasion of the question is typical of you.

I can anwer the question honestly, and without ambiguity. No, it's not a human being.
All you can do is duck the question.

[Seth]

Even you called it a single celled organism. You need to make your mind up. Is it a human being, or a single celled organism?

It is a single cell of an organism in development of the species homo sapiens sapiens. What else do you think it is?

Your refusal to answer IS an answer.

I haven't refused to answer, I've answered quite specifically by rejecting your fallacious demand for a binary either/or answer by pointing out that a zygote is both a living organism consisting of (at that moment) a single cell and a human being under development at the same time.

The usual trolling answer.
Because that's the question at the essence of the debate. Is a single fertilised cell a human being?
Your cowardly evasion of the question is typical of you.

I can anwer the question honestly, and without ambiguity. No, it's not a human being.
All you can do is duck the question.

You acknowledge that it is a living organism, so is it a duck? Is it a platypus? What species is it, pray tell? Be specific and state the Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species of that single-celled living organism that is created by the alignment along the spindle apparatus of the human male chromosomes and human female chromosomes within a fertilized human egg fertilized by the human male.

Does this single-celled organism exist? Is it living tissue? Has it achieved the state of "being?"

If you are able to honestly answer these questions, the inevitable and sole correct answer should occur to you if you have even a smidgen of intelligence: It's a living human being at the single-cell stage of development.

[mistermack]

It's a living human being at the single-cell stage of development.

Ha, I got a straight answer out of a troll.
I don't know what you were so scared of. It was the obvious conclusion of the position that you adopted.

It's going to get complicated though, when they clone the first human from a skin cell, like dolly the sheep.
Will that person be a human being? And if so, does that mean that all of your skin cells are human beings?

[Tero]

None of this is science. Our rules, our fetuses.

[Brian Peacock]

Where does your obvious regard for the rights of the unborn stand when, in the broadest sense, a prospective mother decides that either she or society do not have the resources to adequately care for a child through to adulthood? Would you agree that sometimes it may be better to have never been born than, say, be born into inevitable grinding poverty, neglect, or some other harm?

That's a philosophical and moral question not a question of science. Before we discuss philosophical and moral issues I'd like to settle the science and come to an agreement about the nature of the organism we are discussing. Otherwise I know where the discussion goes and it inevitably dissolves into bickering about whether or not a fetus is a "human being" or not.

If we can agree, even arguendo, on the premise that the organism created by the alignment of the maternal and paternal chromosomes along the spindle apparatus that forms the "zygote", or what is universally recognized as the first cell of a new and unique human being, is in fact a human being, then it might be productive to discuss the moral and ethical implications of terminating that human life at one time or another.

Whether an abortion should or shouldn't take place in any given set of circumstances necessarily entails a moral judgement, whether by the mother, the mother's family, or society. Abortion is a moral issue, informed by science perhaps--variously, and to a greater or lesser extent--but still a moral matter. So is talking about 'the nature of the [human] organism', for we are more than a any current biological definition of our species can encompass, with our instincts and motivation and the content and context of our individual experiences still far short of anything approaching a full description. I can well understand the impulse to de-emotionalise discussion in what is often, and perhaps nearly always, a highly emotionally-charged arena, but the question posed above is, I hope, an attempt to tease out and pin down the scope and extent of your some view in this matter and explore the possible moral consequences of the position.

[JimC]

We will never let Seth de-fetus!

[Brian Peacock]

[JimC]

Why is my scintillating wit not appreciated?

[Seth]

It's a living human being at the single-cell stage of development.

Ha, I got a straight answer out of a troll.

You've been getting straight answers all along, you just don't like them.

I don't know what you were so scared of. It was the obvious conclusion of the position that you adopted.

It's going to get complicated though, when they clone the first human from a skin cell, like dolly the sheep.
Will that person be a human being? And if so, does that mean that all of your skin cells are human beings?

Perhaps. But that's just an evasion because we're not talking about aborting skin cells, we're talking about aborting human beings.

[Seth]

None of this is science. Our rules, our fetuses.

That's my point. Under your system of laws, the collective makes the rules, right? This means that there is nothing impeding the collective from changing the rules to make abortion illegal, is there?

[Seth]

Where does your obvious regard for the rights of the unborn stand when, in the broadest sense, a prospective mother decides that either she or society do not have the resources to adequately care for a child through to adulthood? Would you agree that sometimes it may be better to have never been born than, say, be born into inevitable grinding poverty, neglect, or some other harm?

That's a philosophical and moral question not a question of science. Before we discuss philosophical and moral issues I'd like to settle the science and come to an agreement about the nature of the organism we are discussing. Otherwise I know where the discussion goes and it inevitably dissolves into bickering about whether or not a fetus is a "human being" or not.

If we can agree, even arguendo, on the premise that the organism created by the alignment of the maternal and paternal chromosomes along the spindle apparatus that forms the "zygote", or what is universally recognized as the first cell of a new and unique human being, is in fact a human being, then it might be productive to discuss the moral and ethical implications of terminating that human life at one time or another.

Whether an abortion should or shouldn't take place in any given set of circumstances necessarily entails a moral judgement, whether by the mother, the mother's family, or society.

Indeed.

Abortion is a moral issue, informed by science perhaps--variously, and to a greater or lesser extent--but still a moral matter.

Yes, it is.

So is talking about 'the nature of the [human] organism', for we are more than a any current biological definition of our species can encompass, with our instincts and motivation and the content and context of our individual experiences still far short of anything approaching a full description. I can well understand the impulse to de-emotionalise discussion in what is often, and perhaps nearly always, a highly emotionally-charged arena, but the question posed above is, I hope, an attempt to tease out and pin down the scope and extent of your some view in this matter and explore the possible moral consequences of the position.

We cannot have an informed and intelligent discussion of the subject and its moral implications unless and until we can agree on the scientific facts that control the discussion. The typical pro-abortion argument for keeping abortion legal is that the fetus is not a human being and does not have rights and therefore may be terminated by the mother at will.

This moral stance is, however, based on a fundamental falsehood, which is that a fetus is not a human being. It is. It can be nothing other than a human being. Whether it is a human being entitled to the protection of the system of laws and rights a particular society uses is an entirely different question that must first be predicated on an agreement about the basice scientific facts involved. It's bootless to argue about the morality of abortion if pro-abortionists bone-headedly deny the fundamental biological facts about the fetus as a justification for their moral stance. Saying "a fetus is not a human being and therefore has no rights" is a classic example of begging the question, because the actual question is in fact whether the scientifically-accurate identification of the fetus as a human being imbues that fetus with human rights. By denying the humanity of the organism the entire conversation is most truculently dismissed based on an obvious and reprehensible refusal to acknowledge simple scientific facts. This stance of denial is of course necessary for pro-abortionists because if they admit that the fetus is a human being, their entire edifice justifying the killing of the fetus crumbles to the ground instantly and their position becomes simply morally indefensible.

That is why pro-abortionists always refer to the fetus as a "Fetus," as if it's a noun which identifies the taxonomy of the organism that somehow differentiates it from other human beings at other stages of development. They hope to evade the true moral issue by dehumanizing the fetus because they know they cannot win the moral argument if they admit that the fetus is in fact, as it indisputably is, a living human being.

[Tero]

None of this is science. Our rules, our fetuses.

That's my point. Under your system of laws, the collective makes the rules, right? This means that there is nothing impeding the collective from changing the rules to make abortion illegal, is there?

Go ahead with the constitutional amendment defining rights of fetuses. No other laws will work.

[mistermack]

According to Seth, one single celled fertilised egg is a human being.

That's as extreme loony as you can get in the abortion debate. It means that all discarded ones are murdered, in the IVF business. Even if they are faulty. But that's his definition of a human being.

As it's a matter of opinion, there is no right or wrong answer. But I don't regard green acorns hanging on a tree as oak trees. And anyone who does is a bit of a loony in my book. It's genetically oak, but it's not a tree. It's not even a plant, till it's separated from it's parent tree, and living a separate life.

I know it's a difficult concept. Most people get it, but some will always struggle with the obvious.