The Glade 4.0

Sentience and sapience are two different things.

If your argument is based on sentience, then you should be anti-abortion, as a fetus develops the ability to feel at 8 weeks: "What the Fetus Feels," British Med. Journal, Jan. 26, 1980, pp. 233-234.

If your argument is based on sapience, then you should be in favor of killing any idiot you desire as long as you can prove they didn't display sound judgement or wisdom.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I have the occasional day when I think this might be a good idea.

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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
█ ♣ █

Oh, I hear ya!

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Once again, guys...this thread is awesome.

I'm not sure why Hellfire has a "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde syndrome", but we have a 4 page thread debating a sensitive, emotionally-charged subject like abortion with several conflicting views and we're just discussing it rationally without ad hominems. I'm rather surprised.

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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
█ ♣ █

By the way, I'm really surprised, especially in this forum, that nobody ever points out the really difficult-to-resolve problem with my solution, that I haven't figured out an answer for (yet.)

In the interests of intellectual honesty, I'll ask it for you:

"Sure, it's fine to induce labor and keep them alive artificially, but who's going to pay for this medical service? The financially disadvantaged minorities who are currently having the majority of abortions in America can't pay for it."

Yeah, no idea. I still think it's a good idea, but I haven't figured out all the details, and probably won't.

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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
█ ♣ █

*****.

Better?

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Yeah? Well **** you, and the non-pink, non-bouncing unicorn you rode in on!

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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 think my argument stems more around personal responsibility. I am not arguing whether the clump of cells and the feeling of a fetus make it a viable life-form. My arguement is that those clumps of cells and that fetus will inevitably be a born human. Continuance of the species. If your not willing to accept the responisiblity of what human nature expects you do to then keep your legs closed and your wanger in the hanger, or use proper protection. Sure they fail too, but that is the risk that the human beast should be willing to take. I mean if 25 minutes of pleasure is worth an 18 year sentence then by all means procreate! Woo-Hoo Go Babies!

As mine kicks me as I type this.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

You realize that was my officially requested title on the original glade for several years?

Meredith Brooks sings my themesong.

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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
█ ♣ █

I do, in fact, think that's pretty absurd. Pretty much everyone is against killing children. All of us, however, understand that sometimes children will die in the process of doing other necessary things. This is regrettable and unfortunate, but unavoidable. If it weren't, we could be held hostage to any threat whatsoever to a child.

Presumably, since you appear to be pro-choice, you do not see a fetus as a child. However, I presume you're also against parents simply executing their kids whenever it's convenient, so presumably you do think it becomes a child at some point, right?

Your expectation of pro-life people would be like me demanding that you (and every other pro-choice person) be ok with aborting a baby at any point prior to birth, even when the baby is actually in the process of being delivered and claiming that otherwise you're just drawing an "arbitrary" line and accusing you of inconsistency. What you're doing is, essentially, criticizing the other side for recognizing that the issue is more complex than just "a child being saved." It's not a bad starting point, to make the other side defend its position, but the defense that there may be times when abortion, regrettable though it may be, should be enough for you to accept it and move on in the debate. It hardly demands concession of the entire issue. Simply refusing to accept that defense, however, is just being obstinate.

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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 don't understand this argument. You are certainly not the first one to make it, but I don't get it.

(1) Having a baby is not an 18 year sentence, even without abortion as an option. Giving a child up for adoption is procedurally very easy, and free.
(2) If responsibility can be avoided through easy means that a person has no moral objections to taking, they have no obligation to incur that responsibility. For instance, taking care of shovelling snow from your sidewalk is a responsibility. Moving someplace warmer where it doesn't snow isn't some great dereliction of personal responsibility, nor is accepting offers to do it for you by your neighbor with a snow-blower. And if you are legally allowed to get rid of your sidewalk completely, go for it.

"Responsibility" is not sacred, or a moral imperative. Removing the situation that causes responsibility is a perfectly acceptable way of taking care of the responsibility, if it is possible to do so.

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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
█ ♣ █

If that ever came to be reality, I think that the Catholic healthcare/Catholic charities would have to be among the caregivers/payors.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

For what it's worth, my stance on abortion in the case of rape was budged by somebody who made that choice, that's why I'm open to entertaining it as an exception. Their account of the experience of carrying a child that was a product of rape forced me to consider a wider issue than simply the life of the child.

I still, years and years later, haven't figured out the best way to resolve the competing factors with the life of the child, but I cannot deny that that circumstance makes it a much more complex issue with multiple grave and serious factors to weigh against each other.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

What defines a human though? Is it solely our thinking & feeling? I also would consider our experiences as part of what define us.

To use a computer analogy, (and a bad one) an individual is:
The Hardware (body, brain)
The Program (Consciousness)
The Data (Life Experience)

The person is the result of all three. A mental vegetable is not a person. They are Hardware only. A Fetus is not a person. It is Hardware & Program, but no data. A computer is not a person. It is hardware & data, without program.

It isn't a perfect analogy.

On a more pragmatic note, its hard for me to get worked up about the loss of potential human life when the world's population is crossing 7 billion people.

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I'm trying really hard to not be an absolute dick to you for this terribly ill-considered line.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Note that I said "loss of potential human life" not "potential loss of human life"

Thanks for the responses. I didn't mean to come off hard-headed, but sometimes I like to dig a little. Yes I'd call myself pro-choice, but I realize how slippery of a slope it is when you're trying to justify abortions. I've always like the idea of qualia being the subjective yardstick to which we measure a "person", but, that's kind of impossible to measure.

We know what you posted.

Of course, since your clarification makes you much more deserving of whatever dickishness Kaffis is suppressing, way to miss the entire discussion happening in this thread Captain Oblivious.

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**** it. I'm not going to be that guy. Especially not in the thread that just got commented on for civility.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

And civility died. Par for the course.

How exactly do you think that's an improvement?

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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."

TheRiov:

You made a post dismissing the discussion going on in this thread and then responded to Kaffis by intimating that his objection must come from sort of transliteration error. I wouldn't talk about civility dying unless you're owning up to the fact you killed it.

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Because potentiality is not actuality.
An egg is not a chicken.
A trip hazard is not a fall.
A person with a gun is not a shooting.

Some were sharing their own beliefs and internal logic we just to sort through our beliefs on religion.
Somehow that made Kaffis feel the urge to be "dickish"
I'm not sure how me explaining my internal logic would make him want to be a jerk, (but he apparently restrained himself) but just in case, I clarified my statement. (Its not like we've never had a misinterpretation of this board.
Then Khross felt the need to jump in and suggest that I deserve whatever petty insult Kaffis had waiting in the wings, and throw in one of his own.

...

English, ****! Do you speak it?

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