Abortion from a Atheist viewpoint

Malari

I am against abortion entirely

Tim Robbins wrote: »

The brain is there from week 11. I don't think you've really thought about this. You just pulled 24th week out, then you say the sooner the better, even though you say you trust "medical experts" about the 24th week. Sounds like a contraction and you haven't thought this through.

As for "higher brain development". What about a severly handicapped person should they face the chopper because they don't have "higher brain development".

The cells that make up the brain are there at week 11, that doesn't mean it's fully functioning. How much detailed thinking do I need to do to comment? I have thought it through and I do have a good bit of background in biology too so I'm not just trusting medical experts. This is the difference between being pro-choice and pro-abortion.

Why can't you get it out of your head that a person who has been born and grown up is NOT the same as a foetus. You keep making the same argument!

Tim Robbins

Undecided

Malari wrote: »

The cells that make up the brain are there at week 11, that doesn't mean it's fully functioning.

Dito a severly handicapped person.

How much detailed thinking do I need to do to comment? I have thought it through and I do have a good bit of background in biology too so I'm not just trusting medical experts. This is the difference between being pro-choice and pro-abortion.

Pro - choice is just rhetoric. Choice is usually associated with a good thing, so it's like a trick to make out you have a honourable position.
Sometimes choice is a bad thing and it's bad thing to provide it.

In this particular detabe, pro-choice is as meaningless as pro life.
It depends exactly on the nature of choice, the consequences, the intent, the options, a hole range of things. Dumbing it down to rhetoric is just not thinking it through.

Why can't you get it out of your head that a person who has been born and grown up is NOT the same as a foetus. You keep making the same argument!

It's actually you who has a problem differentiating. When I challenged you about killing a fetus that was one hour befor e becomnig a baby, you changed your tune very quickly. It's nothing to do with "grown up" unless you are also advocating infanticide.

Yes being "pro - choice" may make you feel liberal and open minded, but it's nothing more fluffy, vacuous rhetoric.

Malari

I am against abortion entirely

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Dito a severly handicapped person.


Pro - choice is just rhetoric. Choice is usually associated with a good thing, so it's like a trick to make out you have a honourable position.
Sometimes choice is a bad thing and it's bad thing to provide it.

In this particular detabe, pro-choice is as meaningless as pro life.
It depends exactly on the nature of choice, the consequences, the intent, the options, a hole range of things. Dumbing it down to rhetoric is just not thinking it through.


It's actually you who has a problem differentiating. When I challenged you about killing a fetus that was one hour befor e becomnig a baby, you changed your tune very quickly. It's nothing to do with "grown up" unless you are also advocating infanticide.

Yes being "pro - choice" may make you feel liberal and open minded, but it's nothing more fluffy, vacuous rhetoric.

I am not pro-choice because it makes me feel liberal, I'm pro-choice because if I ever become pregnant I'm having an abortion. End of. I can only speak from personal feeling.

I never changed my tune, I've always felt the same way. It's not up to me to decide WHEN an abortion should be performed. You have a problem differentiating between allowing people to choose abortion (whatever the time limits) versus advocating it.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

Malari wrote: »

I am not pro-choice because it makes me feel liberal, I'm pro-choice because if I ever become pregnant I'm having an abortion. End of. I can only speak from personal feeling.

I never changed my tune, I've always felt the same way. It's not up to me to decide WHEN an abortion should be performed. You have a problem differentiating between allowing people to choose abortion (whatever the time limits) versus advocating it.

Yes you did. You bantered the word "fetus" around just like you are with "pro - choice".
Yes I would have a problem with letting people choose time limits, when it is 100% obvious, they haven't even a clue about those time limits themselves. This discourse no exception.

As for having an abortion "end off". Why are you ruling out adoption? Surely you know a few people who are adopted, and their families? Does that not even challenge your certitude?

Dades

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Pro - choice is just rhetoric. Choice is usually associated with a good thing, so it's like a trick to make out you have a honourable position.

That's rubbish (check out my argument by assertion).

It's a perfectly usable phrase to replace the use of "pro-abortion" which suggests that abortion is something you positively approve of. The inference of pro-choice does exactly what it says on the tin.

Mark Hamill

Malari wrote: »

You seem to think that giving birth is the most important thing that a woman can do if she ever finds herself pregnant, yet you reduce the whole process to a "hassle".

Just to make sure you understand me, I think the most important thing a woman and the man who end up pregnant can do is have the baby and raise it as best they can. I do not reduce it to a "hassle", those who don't want to have a baby because they're too expensive, its too much work or they're not ready, they reduce it to a hassle.

Malari wrote: »

I assume my parents, and most other parents, make a decision to have children based on emotional and financial convenience. Now you're turning against people who use a bit of family planning?!

So now its family planning to kill off children who are emotionally or financially inconvienient?

Wicknight wrote:

Equally, the fetus has no potential on its own. It needs the woman's body. That is the point of the abortion.

Why stop there. How much potential does a newborn baby have? Its still completely requires an adult to ensure its survival (a lactating women if that adult doesn't have access to the right new born baby food). Newborns can't survive by themselves, toddlers can't, the odds are extremely stacked against 6,7 or 8 year olds surviving completely by themselves.

Any talk of "higher brain function" being the marker is pretty hypocritical, as its still making the issue all about potential. Higher brain function may effectively come into being at 24 weeks, but babies don't tap dance their way out of the womb. New born babies don't cogitate on anything when they're born, no more than an animal would anyway. They wont walk or talk untill about about 18 months (give or take a few) and even then its incredibly simplistic for another year or two. Higher brain function may turn on (so to speak) but its not like it makes the child immediately any more human because of it.
If "higher brain function" purely concerns the central nervous system of the child taking over the work of the organs, then the fate of the child depends on whether it has unconscious control of its body? Its not like its a low percentage outcome, healthy foetuses have an extremely good (essentially definite chance) of developing this higher brain function anyway (assuming the mother doesn't drink/do drugs)

Malari wrote:

I'm pro-choice because if I ever become pregnant I'm having an abortion. End of. I can only speak from personal feeling.

Have you thought about getting a tubal ligation?
Have you thought about what I said in the last paragraph of post 153

mollydolly271

I am against abortion entirely

i defo think its up to the woman i know 2 of my friends have had abortions years ago and neither of them entered into it lightly and still to this day always have it in their minds and often talk about it,also i think that women having to travel outside this country for it is crazy and only adds to the stress and worries making arrangements,flights,hotels and especially the expense worries its madness in this day and age...:mad:

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Tim Robbins wrote: »

It comes down to consequentialism.
What is the consequence of making something illegal or legal.
Some issues such as speeding at 150 mpH and killing people it makes sense to make illegal. Other issues, Prostitution, Abortion you can make arguments for making the legal.

Interesting you mention consequentialism.

What are the consequences to the outside world if a baby is aborted?

Tim Robbins

Undecided

Dades wrote: »

That's rubbish (check out my argument by assertion).

It's a perfectly usable phrase to replace the use of "pro-abortion" which suggests that abortion is something you positively approve of. The inference of pro-choice does exactly what it says on the tin.

It's sophistry and refusing to face up to the issue.

Further info:

http://books.google.ie/books?id=Tot9PBjLNCQC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=colin+mcginn+abortion+%22pro-choice%22&source=web&ots=Rm3X-aEgX0&sig=V_Kc8B732YKp_-D3nnKZBg_9yCY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA33,M1

Page 33 down.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Interesting you mention consequentialism.

What are the consequences to the outside world if a baby is aborted?

Why is the world "outside"?

mollydolly271

I am against abortion entirely

I notice alot of men posting on this INTERESTING as this is one desision they will never have to make alone!!!

Tim Robbins

Undecided

mollydolly271 wrote: »

I notice alot of men posting on this INTERESTING as this is one desision they will never have to make alone!!!

What makes you think, women should have the de facto right, to make the decision alone? If that's what you are trying to infer.

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Why is the world "outside"?

By "the world outside" I meant human society prior to this zygote/embryo/fetus being conceived.

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

mollydolly271 wrote: »

I notice alot of men posting on this INTERESTING as this is one desision they will never have to make alone!!!

Only women should be allowed debate issues surrounding the rights (or lack of) of the unborn? GTFO.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

JC 2K3 wrote: »

By "the world outside" I meant human society prior to this zygote/embryo/fetus being conceived.

Even though we've both had a brain since week 11, I don't understand this.

Dades

I notice alot of men posting on this INTERESTING as this is one desision they will never have to make alone!!!

Tim Robbins wrote: »

What makes you think, women should have the de facto right, to make the decision alone? If that's what you are trying to infer.

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Only women should be allowed debate issues surrounding the rights (or lack of) of the unborn? GTFO.

I saw neither of those suggestions in the original post.

/shrug

JC 2K3

I am against abortion entirely

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Even though we've both had a brain since week 11, I don't understand this.

I view the existence of one's brain at that stage to be inconsequential.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

Dades wrote: »

I notice alot of men posting on this INTERESTING as this is one desision they will never have to make alone!!! I saw neither of those suggestions in the original post.

/shrug

I had a typo in mine.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

JC 2K3 wrote: »

I view the existence of one's brain at that stage to be inconsequential.

? don't know where this going or what your point is...

Zombrex

Tim Robbins wrote: »

No. They are not the same. There's a mathematical reason and a logical reason. If you take your argument to it's conclusion, you think using a condom is same as having an abortion, then you are saying, abortion should be an acceptable form of contraception.

Well abortion technically isn't a form of contraception, because it occurs after conception, but early term abortion is as acceptable or as selfish as using contraception. The result is the same, no baby.

You still haven't explained why it is selfish to have an abortion ("I don't want a baby, I'm having an abortion"), but not selfish to use a condom ("I don't want a baby, I'm using a condom")

Tim Robbins wrote: »

No it's not.

Yes, it really is. As I explained.

Tim Robbins wrote: »

You are saying potentiality is independent of probability. I am saying it is not.

No, I'm saying your probabilities are wrong.

A sperm only has a 1 in a million chance of reaching the egg (it is less probable than that, but at least that sounds good), but there are millions of sperm in your semen.

You can't use a condom without destroying the one sperm that probably would have made it. You don't know which one that was, but that is irrelevant because you aren't destroying one sperm at a time. The one sperm that makes it has as much potential to end up a 55 year old man as a zygote does.

These debates about how 1 sperm has no potential always ignore the fact that there isn't one sperm there are millions, and you destroy all of them including the one that would have made it. So you can argue that destroying all the other ones is perfectly fine, because they never would have done anything except die anyway. But in the process of using the condom you are also destroying the one sperm that was going to make it. That is, after all, the whole point of using a condom.

To say that this specific sperm has no potential is utter nonsense. If it has no potential you wouldn't be using a condom. The fact that you don't know which sperm is the one what has potential to be a baby is irrelevant because you are destroying all of them.

Tim Robbins wrote: »

The state can engage through education and law.

I'm not following. Do you think the State should be involved in each and ever abortion "choice" that a woman takes in a pro-choice context?

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Correct, but you omitted other factors.

Please explain what "other factors" (the mother was raped?) mean that the child does not have a right to life and the protection of life?

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Argument by assertion.

Umm, I'm going to go ahead and assume you don't understand what that actually means, because basically your last few posts have been argument/proof by assertion. You say something is the case, others including myself give examples where that doesn't hold, you refuse to change your original assertion.

Wikipedia
Proof by assertion is a logical fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction.

As I ask, can you explain why the examples given by myself are not contradictions of your original assertions, explain what "other factors" allow your assertion that say the emotional state of a raped mother does have bearing on the right to life of say a 5 year old child.

Tim Robbins wrote: »

If you say it's ok to kill fetuses, you are saying it is ok to kill children.

No, I'm not, because you are ignoring why I'm saying it is ok to kill (some) fetues, and not ok to kill children or adults.

As I have already explained, a fetus goes through various stages of development. Before the fetus has developed a brain system capable of the characteristics that I consider the valuable part of a human, it has not developed person-hood, and does not possess the entity that we confirm rights upon.

I would point out though that if a person asserts that a fetus has the same status as a child, and a person argues that it is justified, or can be justified, to kill a fetus because the fetus resulted in the rape of the mother, that is the same as saying it can be justifiable to kill a child if the child resulted in the rape of the mother.

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Furthermore, if you wish to continue this debate, it might be more helpful if you stop using the word fetus and delineated appropriately.

Fetus is the appropriate word to describe an unborn baby after the embryo phase. Perhaps it is your assumptions that need to be stopped.

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Otherwise, I asssume you think it's ok to kill a fetus one hour before he / she pops.

You shouldn't assume that, and if you read my posts properly you wouldn't

Dades

Tim Robbins wrote: »

I had a typo in mine.

All I can see are too many commas!

Zombrex

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Oh so God creates logical ethical decisions then :-)

No, humans do. Not evolution, nor God.

Tim Robbins wrote: »

It can be both an axiom and emotional feeling.

It can, but so far you haven't explained why it is an axiom, and I imagine if you try and apply the emotional feeling as an axiom you are going to run into a lot of problems (for example exceptions, which shouldn't occur if it is an axiom)

Tim Robbins wrote: »

And can you specify when that time is?

No. I can specify when it isn't.

Zombrex

Malari wrote: »

Like Wicknight, higher brain development seems to be reasonable. I can't say for sure what the stage of development would be at 39 weeks, but I know at 24 weeks the nervous system only has partial control over the organs and I'm confident that medical experts didn't pluck 24 weeks out if thin air.

I still think the sooner the better and that people shouldn't be humming and hawing over a decision until the 24th week.

I think the law should air on the side of caution. It is clear that a zygote or embryo doesn't have a brain, let alone a brain capable of higher brain functions. It is the period when things start getting unclear that causes the trouble. If we can't be certain we should dial back the period to a time we can be pretty certain and leave the cut off there. The risk that a person could be destroyed gets too high.

I think the 24 weeks is based on the viability of the fetus to survive outside of the womb, which isn't a factor I would consider too highly. But it certainly wasn't plucked out of the air.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

Wicknight wrote: »

but early term abortion is as acceptable or as selfish as using contraception. The result is the same, no baby.

How early?

You still haven't explained why it is selfish to have an abortion ("I don't want a baby, I'm having an abortion"), but not selfish to use a condom ("I don't want a baby, I'm using a condom")

I have. The two issues are potentiality and sentience. In both cases there is a categorical difference.

No, I'm saying your probabilities are wrong.

A sperm only has a 1 in a million chance of reaching the egg (it is less probable than that, but at least that sounds good), but there are millions of sperm in your semen.

You can't use a condom without destroying the one sperm that probably would have made it. You don't know which one that was, but that is irrelevant because you aren't destroying one sperm at a time. The one sperm that makes it has as much potential to end up a 55 year old man as a zygote does.

P (Sperm fertilizing with sex with Condom): 0.01 out of a million.
P (Sperm fertilizing with sex without Condom): : 1 out of a million.

To say that this specific sperm has no potential is utter nonsense.

It's mathematics.

I'm not following. Do you think the State should be involved in each and ever abortion "choice" that a woman takes in a pro-choice context?

Correct.

Please explain what "other factors" (the mother was raped?) mean that the child does not have a right to life and the protection of life?

I already did.

Umm, I'm going to go ahead and assume you don't understand what that actually means

I know what it means. You asserted the "other factors" were irrelevant.

As I have already explained, a fetus goes through various stages of development. Before the fetus has developed a brain system capable of the characteristics that I consider the valuable part of a human, it has not developed person-hood, and does not possess the entity that we confirm rights upon.

Can you clarify when? 11 weeks when the fetus has brain cells, 24 weeks when some other poster thought so because that is what many Euro countries stipulate?

You shouldn't assume that, and if you read my posts properly you wouldn't

A fetus is from 11 weeks up until pop time.
You seem to delineate again this time, but are unclear about it. You mention brain capacity, but are unclear when exactly this is, as the brain is present at the 11th week. If you stopped equivocating and delineating, then it would be clear exactly what you meant.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

Wicknight wrote: »

No, humans do. Not evolution, nor God.

This is a bit stupid. You said:
"Evolution creates emotional responses, not logical ethical decisions. "

Evolution created humans with an emotional capacity and capacity for logic.

It can, but so far you haven't explained why it is an axiom, and I imagine if you try and apply the emotional feeling as an axiom you are going to run into a lot of problems (for example exceptions, which shouldn't occur if it is an axiom)

Yes I have.

No. I can specify when it isn't.

Well where is this going? You don't agree with late abortion because the brain has reached a certain stage, but you cannot say when this stage manifests?
Correct?

dynastygal

I am against abortion entirely

Pro Choice. Women's body, women's rules. When a man can put up with periods for 40-50 years, allow a child to grow in their body for 9 months, give birth, breast feed etc, then I'll be interested in what they have to say about abortion, till then, it's totally the woman's choice imo.

Tim Robbins

Undecided

dynastygal wrote: »

Pro Choice. Women's body, women's rules. When a man can put up with periods for 40-50 years, allow a child to grow in their body for 9 months, give birth, breast feed etc, then I'll be interested in what they have to say about abortion, till then, it's totally the woman's choice imo.

What nonsense. Are you saying that the woman can kill the baby an hour before birth because it's still her body? Do you have any other sociopath characteristics?

dynastygal

I am against abortion entirely

No, it's not nonsense, because most abortions obviously wouldn't occur 1 hour before birth *rolls eyes*.

If you're going to try refute my opinion, at least use a logical, and likely to happen scenario/argument.

Dades

dynastygal wrote: »

Pro Choice. Women's body, women's rules. When a man can put up with periods for 40-50 years, allow a child to grow in their body for 9 months, give birth, breast feed etc, then I'll be interested in what they have to say about abortion, till then, it's totally the woman's choice imo.

Interesting how you've turned this into a wimmin's issue. Oppressed much?

I suppose it they had another referendum on it, you'd prefer if only the female half of the population were asked.

dynastygal

I am against abortion entirely

To me it is a women's issue. It's her body. Sorry my opinion offends the opposite sex, but that's how it is. Don't like it, go get a sex change