The Glade 4.0

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.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

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.

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.

The typical abortion is performed for a single woman who is never going to receive a dime from the baby's father.

Women like a young lady my family knows who thought she was going to be getting married to a young exchange student from Germany that she'd been dating, a young man who conspicuously never returned to school for the Fall semester after she got pregnant. Women like my ex-girlfriend, who was in a rather emotionally abusive relationship, returned home, and then found out she was pregnant.

Anti-abortion advocates think that it's proper and tasteful to descend upon emotionally vulnerable young women like a pack of ravening wolves, and call them murderers.

Meanwhile, these people have the unmitigated gall to claim they're motivated by compassion.

That is, in a way, perhaps the most insulting and offensive aspect of the anti-abortion advocates: the claim that they are "pro-life." The demographic that opposes abortion is the same demographic that most actively supports the "War on Terror," and most actively supports capital punishment. Pro-life they certainly are not. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. It is not enough to prey on frightened pregnant women, they also have to insult everyone else's intelligence by telling us they feel life is sacred.

The simple fact of the matter is that anti-abortion advocates are nothing more than a group of rabid jackals who get off on guilt-tripping impressionable and vulnerable teenage girls. They are contemptible human refuse, and it is long past time to stop attempting to reason with them as civilized human beings.

**** you all, and enjoy your abortion thread.

I have provided my evidence:
1) It is genetically distinct from the mother and therefore not her body.
2) An unborn child is not excluded as a person and therefore is entitled to the same constitutionally-protected rights as a born person.

Whereas you have provided... nothing. No evidence, no studies, not even a logical espousal of your position.

What is necessary to determine for these purposes is when the "person" or "human being" begins, and this is something else entirely. In developmental biology, determining this would be some synthesis of the Neurological view of when human life begins (recognizable brainwaves on an EEG at somewhere around 25 weeks) and the Ecological/Technological view (the point when an individual can exist separately from the environment in which it was dependent for development.)

Should I ignore your logical fallacy that hospitals declare brain-dead people to be dead? Not to mention you are moving the goalposts again, now a brain-dead person is not a person anymore? What level of mental function do you deign strips you of your status as a person and moves you into the fungal-level?

we already grant privileges of the protection of law to non-moral actors (animals). Rights are inherent - privileges are given and we currently give them.

Why is it wrong to kill a human?

Dolphins can't talk, so therefore they aren't?

It's mostly cultural. The Aztecs used to sacrifice their own citizens.

I personally find it to be exceptionally arrogant when people both believe in natural rights and are certain they know what those natural rights are. How can you be so sure that your view on natural rights is any wiser than that of people 500, 1000, or 2000 years ago, or how your views will stack up 500 years from now? It's like following a religion, except there's even less evidence for your position than there is for pretty much any religion.

Also, in my opinion the majority of pro-life advocates are more concerned with being "right" than they are with saving actual lives. If they were forced to choose between two theoretical worlds, one where abortion is legal but fewer women choose to have abortions, and another where abortion is illegal but more women have "back-alley" illegal abortions, they would choose the latter.

Um, that's kinda the point, Elm. By making one's status as human the benchmark for when rights, rather than privileges, attach, you deny rights of non-humans. Your approach creates an underclass of beings that are intelligent, emotional, and quite capable of suffering, but who have zero inherent rights, and that approach is based on a purely arbitrary rationale - species. The moral hazard exists because drawing the line based on species rather conveniently serves the interests of the line-drawers while insulating them from any risk of exclusion.

several posts above

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

When another species can make an impassioned claim for their own rights - then they can be recognized as having rights as well. Until then...yummy yummy flesh.

In the show Futurama they're always encouraging people to walk into Suicide booths. So not all cultures value life that highly.

Show me a fetus that can make an impassioned claim for its rights. Until then...yummy yummy stem cells.

Right because I obviously said "when every individual member of that species can make an impassioned plea for its rights at every stage of its development". I said when that species can as in when one representative of that species can.