Abortion: Legal or Illegal

Yes adhering to a philosophical principle regarding the purpose and form of government is to hide from a question. 

Edited by Equality 7-2521 - January 29 2012 at 14:33

I'm not sure why you can consider a fetus that lacks sentience the equivalent of a human being. They lack sentience and emotions, so they do not qualify. I, too, agree that we should protect human life and property, but calling a fetus "human life" is a huge stretch of the term.   

As I've said before, males have the right to bodily autonomy. Woman deserve the same right as well, but we if ban abortion, then they lose that right because an unwanted fetus violates the right to bodily autonomy. And that is why I am okay with abortion but not infanticide, because a newborn doesn't violate this right, but a fetus does.  

Edited by Dudemanguy - January 29 2012 at 14:56

When it comes to the life of a mother vs the life of child neither government nor church should have the final say.

By the way, Gamemako- I believe you are the first person I've heard who just seems disgusted with the unborn, like they're innately unwanted, terrible, and worthless.  

I can only hope you eventually become more tolerant in your view of who is allowed to live.

It's definitely not a case of eugenics... Maybe, neugenics?

^When they are worded as some here have worded them, when they are presented in the way they have been, I understand what you say. 

Epignosis wrote: Respectively: 1. You do realize that the Preamble of the Constitution does not assign or restrict the powers of the federal government, right?

I did say it had no force of law. However, it is the only place in the Constitution where you will find intent. Nowhere else will you find the purpose law, only specifics on what can and can't be done. I provided the only guidance on the issue.

Epignosis wrote: 2. Why is this woman foolish and arrogant because she fought for her child's life?  Are you suggesting that the handicapped are better off dead?  And I'm precisely questioning the physicians' notion of what is ethical- someone has to.

Analogous situation: woman sends firefighters into her house after her "baby" without mentioning that it's a dog.

Epignosis wrote: 3. Your idea of "life" horrifies me.  There are people who are incapable of thought or feeling.  They are still human beings and still have rights.  That you call children "paper-mache figure shaped roughly like an infant" is abhorrent.

You are like those poor parents of Terri Schiavo, who were utterly convinced that there was somewhere behind those eyes, yearning to get out.

There wasn't.

Epignosis wrote: My question to you (and anyone here): When that baby was removed from her mother, and she was breathing on her own, was she a human being with rights?  Or was she a "blob of flesh, no better than a dead body?"

Terri Schiavo's body lasted for nearly two weeks after the feeding tube was removed, but she died 15 years before.

Epignosis wrote: By the way, Gamemako- I believe you are the first person I've heard who just seems disgusted with the unborn, like they're innately unwanted, terrible, and worthless.   I can only hope you eventually become more tolerant in your view of who is allowed to live.

I doubt I will ever come to your point of view. I value that which makes us human: our minds. Beyond that, we are naught but vessels. Perhaps in your lifetime, you will see lost limbs replaced by mechanical ones. Maybe you will see biomechanical pumps replace failing hearts. Through all of that, we will become no less human. All of it is replaceable but the brain, and that which completely lacks presence of mind is no longer a life worth valuing. Only late-term abortions would give me pause, and as I said previously, late-term abortions are not only rare, they are as a subset rarely done for any other reason than the protection of the mother's life. Only then do I begin to measure it against freedom. If there are cases I would find abhorrent, they are far too rare and far too subjective to legislate.

Edited by The T - January 29 2012 at 20:16

Equality 7-2521 wrote: Even if you everything you say carries the utmost truth, you seem to profess it with such a cold disposition that I'm hard pressed to want to adopt your view.

I could shower it with apologies, but that will truly not make it more appealing at its core. Accepting the notion that a living brain in a jar is more human than a child's dead body is something most people will never do (or want to do, as they will justify to themselves). Again, for most people, morality is an emotional response which we later justify (I do not claim to be different; I cannot know my own thought processes). Sure, I could talk about the dignity of life or some similar notion to manipulate your emotional response. I could do my damnedest to pull the wool over your eyes. Maybe that would please your ego, but it would be a disservice to all here and, in my opinion, ethically questionable (as was Bush using peripheral arguments like the "mushroom cloud" to convince people to go to war).

I do not devalue human life, I devalue the vessel in which we reside.

Gamemako wrote: You are like those poor parents of Terri Schiavo, who were utterly convinced that there was somewhere behind those eyes, yearning to get out. There wasn't. Terri Schiavo's body lasted for nearly two weeks after the feeding tube was removed, but she died 15 years before.

This summarizes your view.  No mind = no humanity.  I feel comfortable rejecting that without much thought.

Gamemako wrote: Equality 7-2521 wrote: Even if you everything you say carries the utmost truth, you seem to profess it with such a cold disposition that I'm hard pressed to want to adopt your view.  I could shower it with apologies, but that will truly not make it more appealing at its core. Accepting the notion that a living brain in a jar is more human than a child's dead body is something most people will never do (or want to do, as they will justify to themselves). Again, for most people, morality is an emotional response which we later justify (I do not claim to be different; I cannot know my own thought processes). Sure, I could talk about the dignity of life or some similar notion to manipulate your emotional response. I could do my damnedest to pull the wool over your eyes. Maybe that would please your ego, but it would be a disservice to all here and, in my opinion, ethically questionable (as was Bush using peripheral arguments like the "mushroom cloud" to convince people to go to war). I do not devalue human life, I devalue the vessel in which we reside.

I am a materialist Christian.  For some here, that makes no sense.  I believe in the Bible, in Jesus, and in God, but I do not believe in souls, hell, demons, the Devil, or other such things. 

Whatever is physical is real.  We don't have souls, because as Benjamin Franklin observed, if we swoon (or as I've observed, if our eyes are cut out), our souls don't take over and give us visibility into the world.

You call a fetus a blob.  I say we are but blobs.  We are just cells doing their jobs.  That's why I cannot distance myself from the unborn.