The Glade 4.0

Just to clarify, I'm not asking if you agree with the conclusion morally, just whether you acknowledge that it is rationally defensible.

No, it is a human. Tell me what species it is if not a human. You're simply stating its a not a mature human which is rather obvious but its stage of development does not affect speciation.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You're mixing two entirely different concepts. Merely being human does not make it a human, or more precisely, a human being. (In fact, your imperative "Tell me what species it is if not a human" is gramatically incorrect. Its species is not "a human." Its species is just human.) What species it is is not up for debate.

I unequivocably proved a zygote is not "a human" here: viewtopic.php?p=134163#p134163

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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No you may have proved it to yourself Taly but that is just agreeing with the unscientific argument you've made.

I've pointed our the moral hazard in getting to judge which humans have protections on their rights by dehumanizing them (Japanese Internment, Trail of Tears, slavery, and so on) yet you continue to try to pin your own standard on which humans are considered to be "a human being" - which is a meaningless subjective standard.

Oh they are a human alright but they aren't a "human being" huh? Are they a true Scotsman or not?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So you dispute my proof? Based on your post above, I'd say you didn't even read it.

The only logical way to claim my argument doesn't work is if you believe that identical twins should not count as two separate persons, but only have the legal rights of a single person. If you accept that identical twins are two separate persons, then what was the single zygote that they developed from? It certainly was not a distinct and separate human being...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

(tone: Not angry) A post-partum baby is not capable of surviving on its own, nor are certain disabled people or the elderly with alzheimer's. Are they no longer human?

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I read it the first time Taly.

I've already dealt with your claim above several posts ago. The single zygote was an individual until the act that created two individuals occurred. Just as if I pull a starfish out of the ocean I have a single starfish and when I cut it in half and toss them back I have lost two starfish.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Your question makes no sense. You are asking if it is rationally defensible to take the life of another. Of course it is, you can rationalize any decision relatively defensibly, Hitler made some compelling rationalizations for the Holocaust and clearly the bulk of the German populace found these arguments both rational and compelling.

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Fantastic.

Let me make a few statements on my behalf:

1. Coro, I don't believe you. My feelings are that it had just been too long since you last launched some ill-concieved horse-shit bomb and you thought this might be a good opportunity. Anything further on the topic is nothing more than a grand ret-con.

2. While I appriciate your attribution, I think you have my participation confused with that of, well, pretty much everyone else on the forum.

3. I honestly don't care enough about you, or anyone else here to care about the personal moral implications of your stances on abortion. Should someone decide to get one, to my way of thinking it's probably better that they won't be passing along their morals to their children in the first place. Less energy for me to expend on worthless people going forward and all that. I only wish the preferred method was an unattended gunshot to the stomache.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

(tone: not angry) I read your argument and found it, to be honest, silly. You have latched onto a logical fallacy and put it on a pedestal. It is the equivalent of stealing all my shoes and saying, "well your feet could be cut off tomorrow so it isn't a crime." Future actions/outcomes do not impact current state.

Regardless of whether the baby divides into twins or not it is still a genetically distinct life, a fact that you have not disputed in 10 years of arguments because you cannot, instead you grasp at whatever random straw is nearby with each argument escalating further into the absurd.

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Absurd. It's either a person or its not. If it can suddenly become two people, it was never a person to start with.



No, he's not. He's asking if it's rationally defensible to take the stand that it is not even a person.

Since it is not rationally defensible to argue that it is a person, and only religious metaphysical claptrap, such as Elmarnieh's "scientific" stance (much in the same way as "intelligent design" or "young earth creationism" are "scientific"), can argue that it is.

Our law protects "persons," not some generic "human life." Our law grants rights to individual persons that protect their lives. As such, the definition of person is entirely the point. What makes "a person?" That's all that matters.

It's important to remember that in a society that values freedom, there is no universal "right" or "wrong." There are simply the laws we choose to enact to maintain the stability and structure of our society. None of this is unequivocably "wrong" or "right" because such things do not exist. If, as a society, we decided that every third child born to us would be sacrificed to Molech at puberty, then that would be "right." There are no "inherent rights" to speak of. There is simply what we decide to protect. Protecting an unsentient lump of cells has no value to our society -- no ethical, economical, or developmental upside.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Actually, common sense and a knowledge of the english language really underlines the fact that if it can still divide into twins (or more), this precludes it from being a genetically distinct life, as it still has not determined whether it will be a genetically distinct life, or two genetically indistinct lives. Accepting twins as separate people, in fact, proves the point that genetic distinction is not even a factor when it comes to determining personhood, so we might as well completely ignore the genetic factor.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Aside from the fact that no one I've ever heard of has an abortion to better society, the situations are not the least comparable

1) Poor people in foriegn countries are not "innocent"; certainly not in the same way an unborn baby is
2) They have their own adults who are physically capable of caring for themselves
3) By that logic, we are killing innocents by speanding money on anything other than forieng aid, since there is an infinite amount of good that could be done. Failure to help a person you are not responsible for in the first place is not a moral failing just because xhoosing to help them is morally praiseworthy. A parent is, on the other hand, responsible for a child.

There is no reason a law outlawing abortion would need to nix birth control either. The law can be written however we please. It does not have to be all or nothing in order to satisfy someone's false dillemma ideas of consistency.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I like this statement, and because of it think that out of everyone here, Diamondeye probably understands this issue better than anyone else on the "pro-life" side. In the absense of specific laws, person-hood is how rights and such are currently framed. Nothing says it needs to stay that way. Elmarnieh's views certainly could be enshrined in law if really wanted. However, the overwhelmingly positive effects the easy availability of abortion has upon a wealthy and developed society makes such less and less likely among first world nations.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Fascinating circular argument, your second statement argues that genetic distinction is not a factor after arguing in the first that it is the whole basis of your stance.

Again, drop your "common sense" and present a scientific argument that tells us when a baby is alive or show me where in the Constitution it requires a "person" be post-partum.

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There are moral hazard and slippery slope problems with basing rights/protections on being genetically human, too: e.g., lack of protection for non-human animals, extended or intensified suffering for humans at the end of their lives, expanded government invasions of privacy during pregnancy, criminal sanctions for actions (or inaction) even most anti-abortion people don't think are problematic, etc.

That's rather the point of the argument from the beginning. The entire idea of using genetic distinction here is logically inconsistent. It also has nothing to do with personhood--two people without genetic distinction can be persons, a cell culture with genetic distinction might not be. So anything to do with genetic distinction is irrelevant.



1) "baby" is not a scientific term. It is an english vernacular term that essentially means "human infant, post-partum, before they can walk." Throwing it around in an abortion debate is nothing more than a "think of the children!" fallacy, attempting to gain emotional traction for one's cause.
2) neither "baby" nor the much more scientifically verifiable term "alive" are relevant here.
3) The constitution doesn't say, and as such is not the authority on the definition of the term person.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Survive on it's own, so like 10 years old or so?

Viability outside the womb one would hope is the very least you could get pro-choice people to agree on yet I've found even that to be a tough sell.

Even still, I dont see the equation with viability outside the womb and humanity.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

They are human, although I also support euthanasia. The battle/argument will never be over due to the emotion around the issue. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing unless carried too far. People always want to argue logically yet we are humans not Vulcan's and emotion is part of being human. Personally I think it is good to bring up the debate on this and other subjects on occasion and reevaluate stances on subjects. I know my thinking today is a lot different than it was years ago on certain subjects.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

As I said it is a very emotional issue. When I say survive on its own I mean functioning heart, lungs, brain. That is my personal standard and there isn't an argument that anyone can make for me to change that at this time. It doesn't matter to me if others agree to it or not. For now the law says it can be done, if that were to change in the future so be it. I would be disappointed somewhat, as I said I would prefer if it wasn't around but I think there are instances where it is necessary and women should have the choice.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

Just to clarify, I'm not precisely "pro-life" in the sense of not being "pro-choice". Personally, I think abortion is morally wrong. However, I also do not think that the Federal government has the power to regulate it. My preference would be for states to have free reign to set their own laws regarding abortion, with no Roe v. Wade or other Federal interference.

I think the discussion over "is it or isn't it a human?" largely misses the point, and is an unsolvable question anyhow. The situation of a fetus being inside a mother and utterly dependent on that person's physical body functions both to create their own and then to sustain it until they are developed enough really has no adequate parallel in any other life situation, and pretty much every analogy has glaring holes.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

humans are **** worthless, so are these pathetic **** lies we call existence. Let the entire game end, just be done with it, we are a cosmic **** with no purpose or reason to exist, there is no god, there is no reason, there is bullshit and everything needs to just end.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

That's how I felt on Saturday, and pretty much everything I said that day as well, except I used bigger words and less profanity. Are you having your period too? That was my problem...I'm feeling better now...give it a couple days, DS.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Don't move my goal-posts for me, genetically distinct from the mother. It is not her body, it is its own body.



So just to reiterate you've got nothing?

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Who cares who it's genetically distinct from. It's not a body. That's the point. (Secondly, it's using her body. It's her right to evict it. She has absolutely no obligation to incubate it. It's not her responsibility at all. If she doesn't want it there, it's nothing but a tresspassing cell culture.)


What exactly do I need to have? The burden of proof is on you. You're the one who wants people who perform/receive abortions to be murderers. As such, you have to prove that under current law, the zygote or fetus is a person. Innocent until proven guilty. Unless you can prove it absolutely is a person, with all the thoughts and feelings that make a person alive (note that a lack of brain activity also means the person is dead - that's when Hospitals all pull the plug), and that she has a responsibility to sacrifice her own body and health so it can live (all pregnancies take their toll on the mother's health) then it's ranked up there with fungus.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █