Abortion from a Atheist viewpoint

Mark Hamill

Malari wrote: »

I'm talking about through the pregnancy and to birth. I think it begins and ends because of the increased tangibility of a foetus as the pregnancy continues.

Sigh, now I'm going to have to convince you, and anyone else with this point of view, that just because something isn't immediately tangible doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't as important as something that is. How do I do that?:)

Malari wrote: »

I have to say, well done, you are the first person I ever heard to state your reason for being against abortion so lucidly. I don't view a foetus this way, but I'd prefer to hear someone say this, rather than try to force someone who is pro-choice into delineating when they are just going to disagree with them anyway.

Thank You:).

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Gegerty wrote: »

Its a belief which has nothing to do with religion. You brought up fate not me. I'm talking about life in the 4th dimensional sense. There's nothing religious about what I'm saying.

Can you explain this 4th dimensional thing? I'm at a loss as to what you mean by it....

Gegerty wrote: »

None of these are preventing nature from taking course. There's nothing to take course. The sperm is sperm, the egg is an egg. you're not killing off something which has already started.

Conception is just one stage in the development process of a sperm/egg. Your arguments are centred around life beginning at conception, which you haven 't shown why.

Gegerty wrote: »

Another reason I'm against it is that I am the type of person who takes responsibility for his actions. If you don't want a baby then don't get pregnant, its a very very easy thing to prevent. Otherwise, if it were me, I would live with the consequences. Obviously rape and incest is a different story.

Like I said before on this thread, why isn't abortion a valid way of taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences?

CerebralCortex

JC 2K3 wrote: »

..Like I said before on this thread, why isn't abortion a valid way of taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences?

Very good point.

Malari

I am against abortion entirely

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Like I said before on this thread, why isn't abortion a valid way of taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences?

I think it's because anti-abortionists don't want you to deal with the consequences, they just want you to accept the pregnancy.

Mark Hamill

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Like I said before on this thread, why isn't abortion a valid way of taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences?

Because killing a baby is not a valid way of dealing with becoming pregnant. Where the responsibility lies is the crux of this argument. IMO (and others too), the responsibility lies in the hands of the parents but the responsibility is to the child.

Mark Hamill

Malari wrote: »

I think it's because anti-abortionists don't want you to deal with the consequences, they just want you to accept the pregnancy.

I think its more of a case that anti abortionists see it that the consequences are something that come after the baby is born, and that abortion is a (bad) way of avoiding those consequences.

Gegerty

Undecided

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Can you explain this 4th dimensional thing? I'm at a loss as to what you mean by it....

Try to think without any distinction of past, present and future. Without these confines life becomes an indivisible something. Its the cause and effect scenario. You are alive because your parents didn't abort you. Likewise you'd be dead if they did. To say that you are simply disgarding some biological mass is very narrow minded.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Conception is just one stage in the development process of a sperm/egg. Your arguments are centred around life beginning at conception, which you haven 't shown why.

Because until then the person will never come to be. So my argument cannot stand.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Like I said before on this thread, why isn't abortion a valid way of taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences?

The same way killing a person is not a responsible way of dealing with things. You asked my opinion! Let me elaborate, if someone dies young people will mourn and say he had his whole life ahead of him. Well go back further, does a foetus not have its whole life ahead of him?

Zombrex

Mark Hamill wrote: »

It seems to me that this argument stems from people thinking that a foetus grows into a human child. I do not believe the foetus grows into a human child, I believe that the foetus is a human child and merely grows, and needs the love and protection of its parents every step of the way.

Well technically "child" is normally defined after birth, but I understand what you mean.

Personally I think that person-hood is something that develops in the fetus, that the embryo and fetus are not a person simply because they exist, any more than the sperm/egg are.

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Gegerty wrote: »

Try to think without any distinction of past, present and future. Without these confines life becomes an indivisible something. Its the cause and effect scenario. You are alive because your parents didn't abort you. Likewise you'd be dead if they did. To say that you are simply disgarding some biological mass is very narrow minded.

But surely then you accept that the fate of some humans is inevitibly abortion?
Also, you are alive because your parents didn't use contraception. Does this make contraception wrong? I could equally say that to disregard sperm/ova to be very narrow minded.

Gegerty wrote: »

Because until then the person will never come to be. So my argument cannot stand.

But you just told me this...

Gegerty wrote: »

Try to think without any distinction of past, present and future.

Gegerty wrote: »

if someone dies young people will mourn and say he had his whole life ahead of him. Well go back further, does a foetus not have its whole life ahead of him?

What people say when someone dies isn't necessarily logical. The person didn't have their whole lives ahead of them because they died young. A fetus which is to be aborted doesn't have its whole life ahead of it because it's going to die shortly.

You seem to be working off the unfounded axiom that after the point of conception, every human has the right to 70/80 years of life and man cannot interfere with this.

Gegerty

Undecided

JC 2K3 wrote: »

But surely then you accept that the fate of some humans is inevitibly abortion?
Also, you are alive because your parents didn't use contraception. Does this make contraception wrong? I could equally say that to disregard sperm/ova to be very narrow minded.

No not every sperm or egg is a potential person I thought I explained that.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

The person didn't have their whole lives ahead of them because they died young.

Cause and effect. OK I agree they didn't have their whole life ahead of them but abortion is still the reason they don't have their whole life ahead of them. In the same sense murder is the reason why some people are dead. The difference being a murdered person had stronger connections. Nobody cares about a foetus, that is the fundamental difference.

Edit: Poor choice of words. What I meant is most people do not care about a foetus. You will find some people who do. You've met some of them on here.

Balfa

I am against abortion entirely

I think (and I'm open to correction) that the concept behind law in general is essentially to prevent (well, minimise) people doing things that would annoy other people.

In this sense, aborting a fetus doesn't annoy anyone if the fetus isn't developed enough to be annoyed. Well, it could annoy people you don't even know, purely on the basis that they consider it repulsive, but the same could be said for killing a spider, or swearing in the privacy of your own home. And that's why the concept is to miminise annoying things, not remove them completely, because no matter what you do, you'll always annoy someone

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Gegerty wrote: »

No not every sperm or egg is a potential person I thought I explained that.

They are potential people..... How aren't they?

Gegerty wrote: »

Nobody cares about a foetus, that is the fundamental difference.

Exactly.

Mark Hamill

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Gegarty wrote:

No not every sperm or egg is a potential person I thought I explained that.

They are potential people..... How aren't they?

Is a heart a potential person? No-one can live without a heart (not for very long anway), and no human can be concieved without a sperm or an egg. While these things (the hearts, the sperm and the egg) are all fundamentally necessary for a person to exist, none of them are "potential people" by themselves.

BurnsCarpenter

JC 2K3 wrote: »

They are potential people..... How aren't they?

They're not. At least not individually.
Arguably, in a situation where a sperm and egg are together and we know that they will form a zygote, then they are potential people.

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Is a heart a potential person? No-one can live without a heart (not for very long anway), and no human can be concieved without a sperm or an egg. While these things (the hearts, the sperm and the egg) are all fundamentally necessary for a person to exist, none of them are "potential people" by themselves.

So what exactly delineates a "potential person"?

As I've said before, a zygote needs a womb and nutrients, how is this any different to an egg needing a sperm and vice versa?

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

BurnsCarpenter wrote: »

They're not. At least not individually.
Arguably, in a situation where a sperm and egg are together and we know that they will form a zygote, then they are potential people.

So by that logic, if a sperm is heading towards an egg and there's 100% chance of fertilisation if there is no external interference, then to interfere would be murder/abortion?

Phototoxin

I am against abortion except for in cases of rape

but when the sperm and ovum fuse then there is a full human being with full dna. It just has to grow.

its like saying a child is not human as it is not fully grown..

BurnsCarpenter

JC 2K3 wrote: »

So by that logic, if a sperm is heading towards an egg and there's 100% chance of fertilisation if there is no external interference, then to interfere would be murder/abortion?

No, we're talking about potentiality.
You said (I believe) that an individual sperm or egg was as much a potential person as a zygote is. I said, that's only the case where sperm and egg are taken together, and there's a 100% chance that fertilisation will occur.

Mark Hamill

JC 2K3 wrote: »

So what exactly delineates a "potential person"?

As I've said before, a zygote needs a womb and nutrients, how is this any different to an egg needing a sperm and vice versa?

An egg needs a sperm (and vice-versa) to become a human, a zygote needs a womb and nutrients to survive. Eggs or sperm are only information carriers for the making of humans (and they only carry half the info), they are not humans of themselves. A zygote is a human in everything but timeline.

Zombrex

Phototoxin wrote: »

but when the sperm and ovum fuse then there is a full human being with full dna. It just has to grow.

its like saying a child is not human as it is not fully grown..

You have a full set of DNA in the sperm/egg pair, and they just need to grow as well. Conception is a processes of growth. It is simply a slightly peculiar form of cell multiplication.

Zombrex

Mark Hamill wrote: »

An egg needs a sperm (and vice-versa) to become a human, a zygote needs a womb and nutrients to survive. Eggs or sperm are only information carriers for the making of humans (and they only carry half the info), they are not humans of themselves. A zygote is a human in everything but timeline.

A sperm is human, so is an egg. They are the first cells of a new human being. They leave the parents and become the offspring. There just happens to be two of them in sexual reproduction, rather than just one in asexual reproduction.

A sperm needs an egg cell to multiply, a zygote needs the womb to multiply. There isn't a whole lot of difference.

They are definitely structural differences, but at the end of the day, if we are talking about "potential" persons, the sperm/egg pair is the start. Destroy either of these and you destroy the potential person that would have existed if you hadn't.

Phototoxin

I am against abortion except for in cases of rape

Wikinight I'm agreeing with you in my above post :pac:

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

I think there's a general, arbitrary, yet understandable feeling that the achievement of singularity is somehow significant in the development of a human.

Mark Hamill

Wicknight wrote: »

A sperm is human, so is an egg. They are the first cells of a new human being. They leave the parents and become the offspring. There just happens to be two of them in sexual reproduction, rather than just one in asexual reproduction.

A sperm or an egg only contain half the chromosones required to become a human so they are not human themselves. They will not become a full human without the other, they are merely the ingredients for a human. A teaspoon of sugar is not the same as a cake, not without the flour, milk, eggs etc.

Wicknight wrote: »

A sperm needs an egg cell to multiply, a zygote needs the womb to multiply. There isn't a whole lot of difference.

A sperm needs an egg to become a zygote. Once the sperm successfully fertilizes an egg, you no longer have an egg or a sperm, you have a zygote, there are chemical differences, and at the end of the day thats what makes everything actually different. There doesn't need to be a lot of difference, just the right type of difference.

Wicknight wrote: »

They are definitely structural differences, but at the end of the day, if we are talking about "potential" persons, the sperm/egg pair is the start. Destroy either of these and you destroy the potential person that would have existed if you hadn't.

Destroying either the sperm or egg only destroys a "potential person" if a specific sperm/egg pair exists in the first place. If you stop sperm from reaching an egg by contraception, there is no sperm/egg pair to destroy, so there is no potential person to destroy. Otherwise everytime someone chats up one specific guy/girl in a club, out of dozens, they are "destroying" dozens of "potential persons" simply by not allowing their sperm/egg to come into contact with the other dozens of sperm/eggs. (Okay, I may not have worded that well but hopefully you get my meaning)

Dades

JC 2K3 wrote: »

I think there's a general, arbitrary, yet understandable feeling that the achievement of singularity is somehow significant in the development of a human.

I concur.
Though I wouldn't say arbitrary, rather the single most important point in the development.

godspenis

I am against abortion entirely

Considering no one would be delighted to have a big abortion, wouldnt it be wiser to allow abortion but also teach people to sex better without getting pregnant?

What if everyone was allowed have an abortion but no one actually had to have one unless they really really wanted to. And then those people who didnt want to get an abortion can say 'fine, you can live like that if you want but im not going to have an abortion because i dont believe in that.'

Then everyone who doesnt love abortions but still think they should be a personal choice can say 'thats fine, i understand that you dont want to get an abortion and i promise not to try and make you get one, so go and be free xoxox'.

I dont think everyone needs to make a big deal out of these things.

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Mark Hamill wrote: »

A sperm or an egg only contain half the chromosones required to become a human so they are not human themselves. They will not become a full human without the other, they are merely the ingredients for a human. A teaspoon of sugar is not the same as a cake, not without the flour, milk, eggs etc.

A cake isn't really a valid cake until it is cooked.

</obvious response to a flawed analogy>

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Otherwise everytime someone chats up one specific guy/girl in a club, out of dozens, they are "destroying" dozens of "potential persons" simply by not allowing their sperm/egg to come into contact with the other dozens of sperm/eggs.

Exactly. It's ludicrous.

This is essentially the basis of my (and I presume Wicknight's) argument that killing a zygote is ok. If you don't believe a "soul" or something is formed when a sperm and egg meet, what difference does it make killing them after they've met as opposed to before they've potentially met?

hmm.. just wanna throw this thought out there. What would you think of the idea of human rights not being universal to every human lifeform, but rather, granted to a person by their parents through the act of allowing them to be born? If you disagree with this, then please offer an explanation why not.

Dades wrote: »

I concur.
Though I wouldn't say arbitrary, rather the single most important point in the development.

Why?

Zombrex

Mark Hamill wrote: »

A sperm or an egg only contain half the chromosones required to become a human so they are not human themselves.

That is the point. They aren't by themselves, they are one of the first two cells of a new human. If you split a zygote in half you get the same effect.

This is where the thought experiment of twins comes in.

If the zygote is a person, and then splits in half to form twins, what happened to that person that was alive and had rights a few minutes ago. Is he/she dead?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

They will not become a full human without the other, they are merely the ingredients for a human. A teaspoon of sugar is not the same as a cake, not without the flour, milk, eggs etc.

Well I'm not sure how you are defining ingredients. The ingredients are the carbon, oxygen etc that make them up. They (the sperm/egg pair) are not ingredients, they are functioning living cells.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

A sperm needs an egg to become a zygote. Once the sperm successfully fertilizes an egg, you no longer have an egg or a sperm, you have a zygote, there are chemical differences, and at the end of the day thats what makes everything actually different. There doesn't need to be a lot of difference, just the right type of difference.

There is a chemical difference, but then there is a chemical difference between a zygote and the stem cells in the embryo, and the non-stem cells in the foetus.

The cells in human reproduction go through massive alterations throughout the process. An egg cell changes dramatically when fertilised, but then a stem cell in the embryo changes dramatically when become a nerve cell.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Destroying either the sperm or egg only destroys a "potential person" if a specific sperm/egg pair exists in the first place.

Well yes, but given how likely it is to become pregnant from sex, that is a pretty safe bet most of the time. The pair may not exist, but it also may exist.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

If you stop sperm from reaching an egg by contraception, there is no sperm/egg pair to destroy, so there is no potential person to destroy.

That isn't true. In fact the very act of stopping a sperm from reaching an egg demonstrates that the sperm/egg pair does exist.

If it didn't exist in the first place you wouldn't need to stop it, would you?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Otherwise everytime someone chats up one specific guy/girl in a club, out of dozens, they are "destroying" dozens of "potential persons" simply by not allowing their sperm/egg to come into contact with the other dozens of sperm/eggs. (Okay, I may not have worded that well but hopefully you get my meaning)

Well yeah, that demonstrates the nonsense of the potential person idea.

Any time you take an action that would result in a potential person if you didn't take that action (not having sex, using a condom when having sex, using a morning after pill that stops conception), you are stopping potential children from existing.

But no one gives a hoot about that in most cases. So what logical reason is there to get worked up about a potential person you stop from happening after conception?

When it comes down to it a "potential person" really has little tangible value.

The reason people get worked up about the abortion of a foetus is that they view it as an actual person, they have created this potential person in their head and assigned it to the body of the foetus. To them this person exists, even though he doesn't (again the twins thought experiment comes in here. How can a person exist if the person suddenly is two people) Logically they may admit that it is only a potential person, but emotionally they hold it as a person. You don't do that when thinking about sperm/egg pair, even though logically there is little difference.

But that is just the funny way our brain works. It doesn't actually map to how reality works.

Zombrex

Dades wrote: »

I concur.
Though I wouldn't say arbitrary, rather the single most important point in the development.

Depends on what you define as important. Considering 8 out of 10 embryos naturally abort before implantation, I would consider implantation to to be the most important stage.

Zombrex

JC 2K3 wrote: »

hmm.. just wanna throw this thought out there. What would you think of the idea of human rights not being universal to every human lifeform, but rather, granted to a person by their parents through the act of allowing them to be born? If you disagree with this, then please offer an explanation why not.

I disagree with that, though as the question was directed to Mark I will let him go first