The Geek Forum
Main Forums => Political Opinions => Topic started by: KoRNexpressor on September 28, 2002, 10:31:54 AM
-
For / Against? why?
-
pro-choice/pro-death(is that possible?)
-
I guess I can see both sides of the argument. It is wrong for people to use it as a form of contraception and fall back plan but in some circumstances it is either abortion or give birth to a kids thats gonna suffer hard times and poverty.
Hmm reminds me of a vid we watched in R.Ea couple of years back on abortion. It was in a clinic that carried out abortions after the legal time limit - dunno the specific age the featus needs to be befores it illegal - and it was basically hundreds of small babies in buckets of disinfectant with the odd limbs here and there. Now that was sick and wrong and people should definatly draw the line there.
Also the way they crush the skull of the featus's skull with tweezers and then suck it out with a small hover thing is very suspect - the vid showed this via a LCD moniter. But I guess some people would say that it is a valid way and it doesn't harm the featus...
-
Hmm reminds me of a vid we watched in R.Ea couple of years back on abortion. It was in a clinic that carried out abortions after the legal time limit - dunno the specific age the featus needs to be befores it illegal - and it was basically hundreds of small babies in buckets of disinfectant with the odd limbs here and there. Now that was sick and wrong and people should definatly draw the line there.
:? Ew, fuckin propaganda. I'm not gonna give my stance on abortion, but I will tell you I hate worst-case scenario propaganda that some puritans like to circulate. It's so rare the fetus will even have developed limbs by the time it's aborted, but the first thing a "man of God" will show you is a partial-birth abortion.... (Who the fuck photographs those anyway?)
-
http://dyingfetus.com
POST COUNT11111111111111111111111!
-
*sigh*
-
^ that was more of a post count increaser type of thing.
LOL. OMG.
here, now this post is meaningful
http://bored.com
http://useful.com
http://microsoft.com
-
Why stop there, I'm for infanticide, still practiced today. I'm also for retroactive abortion. Just sign up for AOL and you should be aborted for the good of humanity.
-
My opinion on the subject of abortion is that those who are anti-abortion should refrain from having them.
-
I just don't believe something like that is right. Not at all.
-
I could never look in to an expecting mother's face and tell her what to do with something growing inside of her.
And the government shouldn't either.
-
Not to belabor the point, but isn't it a once surmised, thrice proven fact that people are stupid? If a mother is so whacked out that she doesn't realize her abortion is killing her own flesh and blood, the government SHOULD be telling her what to do. No sane human would ever do that, in my opinion.
And I have never had an abortion, either. So no, I have no first hand experience. Does that matter? I don't believe so.
-
I have a very clear point of view on abortion. I think it's wrong, but a lot of times, it's for the better.
For example, if a women get's raped, she should be allowed to have the abortion because she did not create this new life by choice. If you didn't choose to, you shouldn't have to take the responsibility.
If a teen get's pregnant because she did not protect herself, and there was an agreement on sex, I would tend to say "Too bad sister". Live with your stupid mistake. However, for the well being of the child, wouldn't it be wrong to let such an stupid girl have a baby? If she can't take care of herself, don't expect she'll be able to take care of a kid. Abortion is acceptable here as well. Why bring life to this world if you know it's going to be a miserable one?
If a couple plans to have a child and when they do, they change their mind. Well Fuck you. You wanted a kid, you get a kid. No abortion for you. NEXT!
It really depends on the situation. I don't think there will ever be a legislation that could be fool proof and that woul dmake the majority happy, because there is no majority when it comes to this question. Everyone has their own thoughts on the matter. The question is not "Should people be able to get abortions or not" The question is "Under what circomstances is abortion acceptable or not". No one will ever agree on a single solution. Until they do, we have no choice but to leave it at the option of the parents.
-
Not to belabor the point, but isn't it a once surmised, thrice proven fact that people are stupid? If a mother is so whacked out that she doesn't realize her abortion is killing her own flesh and blood, the government SHOULD be telling her what to do. No sane human would ever do that, in my opinion.
And I have never had an abortion, either. So no, I have no first hand experience. Does that matter? I don't believe so.
Anybody, unless they're insane, should know that an abortion would kill the child. What you sated was obvious. But then that deals with the government and the mental health of it's citizens which is another completely different story.
I’m not seeing a point, are you saying that the mentally ill shouldn’t have the right to have abortions? Or, are you insinuating that all people should be told what to do by the government because if you have an unwanted child then you are simply idiotic?
-
*checks in his boxers* I think it's none of my damned business....
Unless it's mine of course, that's a different story. But as it goes now, I think my penis and my testicles give me no right to get involved at this point in time. :| Neutrality!!!
-
*sees the freight train headed his way too*
I'm out!
-
Actually, when you look at the big picture, a growing fetus is really a parasite. A parasite is another organism that lives on or in another organism and lives off of the energy of the other organism. A fetus does that. I guess you could look at it as being a parasite and wanting to kill it, but that's only "playing dumb" and hiding the real reasons.
-
I am pro-choice.
-
Actually, when you look at the big picture, a growing fetus is really a parasite. A parasite is another organism that lives on or in another organism and lives off of the energy of the other organism. A fetus does that. I guess you could look at it as being a parasite and wanting to kill it, but that's only "playing dumb" and hiding the real reasons.
Whats one more parasite added to our parasitical race...
-
Only those parasites themselves can really understand who they are. Our race is not parasitical, only our sick little minds are.
-
That is actually a very profound statement. WTG DS!
-
*bows* Thank you, thank you...
I'll be here all week.
-
Oh, thank god! I just wrote this huge essay on abortions (yeah)
All of the arguments against abortion boil down to six specific questions. The first five deal with the nature of the zygote-embryo-fetus growing inside a mother's womb. The last one looks at the morality of the practice. These questions are:
Is it alive?
Is it human?
Is it a person?
Is it physically independent?
Does it have human rights?
Is abortion murder?
Let's take a look at each of these questions. We'll show how anti-abortionists use seemingly logical answers to back up their cause, but then we'll show how their arguments actually support the fact that abortion is moral.
1. Is it alive?
Yes. Pro Choice supporters who claim it isn't do themselves and their cause a disservice. Of course it's alive. It's a biological mechanism that converts nutrients and oxygen into energy that causes its cells to divide, multiply, and grow. It's alive.
Anti-abortion activists often mistakenly use this fact to support their cause. "Life begins at conception" they claim. And they would be right. The genesis of a new human life begins when the egg with 23 chromosomes joins with a sperm with 23 chromosomes and creates a fertilized cell, called a zygote, with 46 chromosomes. The single-cell zygote contains all the DNA necessary to grow into an independent, conscious human being. It is a potential person.
But being alive does not give the zygote full human rights - including the right not to be aborted during its gestation.
A single-cell ameba also coverts nutrients and oxygen into biological energy that causes its cells to divide, multiply and grow. It also contains a full set of its own DNA. It shares everything in common with a human zygote except that it is not a potential person. Left to grow, it will always be an ameba - never a human person. It is just as alive as the zygote, but we would never defend its human rights based solely on that fact.
And neither can the anti-abortionist, which is why we must answer the following questions as well.
2. Is it human?
Yes. Again, Pro Choice defenders stick their feet in their mouths when they defend abortion by claiming the zygote-embryo-fetus isn't human. It is human. Its DNA is that of a human. Left to grow, it will become a full human person.
And again, anti-abortion activists often mistakenly use this fact to support their cause. They are fond of saying, "an acorn is an oak tree in an early stage of development; likewise, the zygote is a human being in an early stage of development." And they would be right. But having a full set of human DNA does not give the zygote full human rights - including the right not to be aborted during its gestation.
Don't believe me? Here, try this: reach up to your head, grab one strand of hair, and yank it out. Look at the base of the hair. That little blob of tissue at the end is a hair follicle. It also contains a full set of human DNA. Granted it's the same DNA pattern found in every other cell in your body, but in reality the uniqueness of the DNA is not what makes it a different person. Identical twins share the exact same DNA, and yet we don't say that one is less human than the other, nor are two twins the exact same person. It's not the configuration of the DNA that makes a zygote human; it's simply that it has human DNA. Your hair follicle shares everything in common with a human zygote except that it is a little bit bigger and it is not a potential person. (These days even that's not an absolute considering our new-found ability to clone humans from existing DNA, even the DNA from a hair follicle.)
Your hair follicle is just as human as the zygote, but we would never defend its human rights based solely on that fact.
And neither can the anti-abortionist, which is why the following two questions become critically important to the abortion debate.
3. Is it a person?
No. It's merely a potential person.
Webster's Dictionary lists a person as "being an individual or existing as an indivisible whole; existing as a distinct entity." Anti-abortionists claim that each new fertilized zygote is already a new person because its DNA is uniquely different than anyone else's. In other words, if you're human, you must be a person.
Of course we've already seen that a simple hair follicle is just as human as a single-cell zygote, and, that unique DNA doesn't make the difference since two twins are not one person. It's quite obvious, then, that something else must occur to make one human being different from another. There must be something else that happens to change a DNA-patterned body into a distinct person. (Or in the case of twins, two identically DNA-patterned bodies into two distinct persons.)
There is, and most people inherently know it, but they have trouble verbalizing it for one very specific reason.
The defining mark between something that is human and someone who is a person is 'consciousness.' It is the self-aware quality of consciousness that makes us uniquely different from others. This self-awareness, this sentient consciousness is also what separates us from every other animal life form on the planet. We think about ourselves. We use language to describe ourselves. We are aware of ourselves as a part of the greater whole.
The problem is that consciousness normally doesn't occur until months, even years, after a baby is born. This creates a moral dilemma for the defender of abortion rights. Indeed, they inherently know what makes a human into a person, but they are also aware such individual personhood doesn't occur until well after birth. To use personhood as an argument for abortion rights, therefore, also leads to the argument that it should be okay to kill a 3-month-old baby since it hasn't obtained consciousness either.
Anti-abortionists use this perceived problem in an attempt to prove their point. In a debate, a Pro Choice defender will rightly state that the difference between a fetus and a full-term human being is that the fetus isn't a person. The anti-abortion activist, being quite sly, will reply by asking his opponent to define what makes someone into a person. Suddenly the Pro Choice defender is at a loss for words to describe what he or she knows innately. We know it because we lived it. We know we have no memory of self-awareness before our first birthday, or even before our second. But we also quickly become aware of the "problem" we create if we say a human doesn't become a person until well after its birth. And we end up saying nothing. The anti-abortionist then takes this inability to verbalize the nature of personhood as proof of their claim that a human is a person at conception.
But they are wrong. Their "logic" is greatly flawed. Just because someone is afraid to speak the truth doesn't make it any less true.
And in reality, the Pro Choice defender's fear is unfounded. They are right, and they can state it without hesitation. A human indeed does not become a full person until consciousness. And consciousness doesn't occur until well after the birth of the child. But that does not automatically lend credence to the anti-abortionist's argument that it should, therefore, be acceptable to kill a three-month-old baby because it is not yet a person.
It is still a potential person. And after birth it is an independent potential person whose existence no longer poses a threat to the physical wellbeing of another. To understand this better, we need to look at the next question.
4. Is it physically independent?
No. It is absolutely dependent on another human being for its continued existence. Without the mother's life-giving nutrients and oxygen it would die. Throughout gestation the zygote-embryo-fetus and the mother's body are symbiotically linked, existing in the same physical space and sharing the same risks. What the mother does affects the fetus. And when things go wrong with the fetus, it affects the mother.
Anti-abortionists claim fetal dependence cannot be used as an issue in the abortion debate. They make the point that even after birth, and for years to come, a child is still dependent on its mother, its father, and those around it. And since no one would claim its okay to kill a child because of its dependency on others, we can't, if we follow their logic, claim it's okay to abort a fetus because of its dependence.
What the anti-abortionist fails to do, however, is differentiate between physical dependence and social dependence. Physical dependence does not refer to meeting the physical needs of the child - such as in the anti-abortionist's argument above. That's social dependence; that's where the child depends on society - on other people - to feed it, clothe it, and love it. Physical dependence occurs when one life form depends solely on the physical body of another life form for its existence.
Physical dependence was cleverly illustrated back in 1971 by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson. She created a scenario in which a woman is kidnapped and wakes up to find she's been surgically attached to a world-famous violinist who, for nine months, needs her body to survive. After those nine months, the violinist can survive just fine on his own, but he must have this particular woman in order to survive until then.
Thompson then asks if the woman is morally obliged to stay connected to the violinist who is living off her body. It might be a very good thing if she did - the world could have the beauty that would come from such a violinist - but is she morally obliged to let another being use her body to survive?
This very situation is already conceded by anti-abortionists. They claim RU-486 should be illegal for a mother to take because it causes her uterus to flush its nutrient-rich lining, thus removing a zygote from its necessary support system and, therefore, ending its short existence as a life form. Thus the anti-abortionist's own rhetoric only proves the point of absolute physical dependence.
This question becomes even more profound when we consider a scenario where it's not an existing person who is living off the woman's body, but simply a potential person, or better yet, a single-cell zygote with human DNA that is no different than the DNA in a simple hair follicle.
To complicate it even further, we need to realize that physical dependence also means a physical threat to the life of the mother. The World Health Organization reports that nearly 670,000 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year (this number does not include abortions). That's 1,800 women per day. We also read that in developed countries, such as the United States and Canada, a woman is 13 times more likely to die bringing a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion.
Therefore, not only is pregnancy the prospect of having a potential person physically dependent on the body of one particular women, it also includes the women putting herself into a life-threatening situation for that potential person.
Unlike social dependence, where the mother can choose to put her child up for adoption or make it a ward of the state or hire someone else to take care of it, during pregnancy the fetus is absolutely physically dependent on the body of one woman. Unlike social dependence, where a woman's physical life is not threatened by the existence of another person, during pregnancy, a woman places herself in the path of bodily harm for the benefit of a DNA life form that is only a potential person - even exposing herself to the threat of death.
This brings us to the next question: do the rights of a potential person supercede the rights of the mother to control her body and protect herself from potential life-threatening danger?
5. Does it have human rights?
Yes and No.
A potential person must always be given full human rights unless its existence interferes with the rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness of an already existing conscious human being. Thus, a gestating fetus has no rights before birth and full rights after birth.
If a fetus comes to term and is born, it is because the mother chooses to forgo her own rights and her own bodily security in order to allow that future person to gestate inside her body. If the mother chooses to exercise control over her own body and to protect herself from the potential dangers of childbearing, then she has the full right to terminate the pregnancy.
Anti-abortion activists are fond of saying "The only difference between a fetus and a baby is a trip down the birth canal." This flippant phrase may make for catchy rhetoric, but it doesn't belay the fact that indeed "location" makes all the difference in the world.
It's actually quite simple. You cannot have two entities with equal rights occupying one body. One will automatically have veto power over the other - and thus they don't have equal rights. In the case of a pregnant woman, giving a "right to life" to the potential person in the womb automatically cancels out the mother's right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
After birth, on the other hand, the potential person no longer occupies the same body as the mother, and thus, giving it full human rights causes no interference with another's right to control her body. Therefore, even though a full-term human baby may still not be a person, after birth it enjoys the full support of the law in protecting its rights. After birth its independence begs that it be protected as if it were equal to a fully-conscience human being. But before birth its lack of personhood and its threat to the women in which it resides makes abortion a completely logical and moral choice.
Which brings us to our last question, which is the real crux of the issue....
6. Is abortion murder?
No. Absolutely not.
It's not murder if it's not an independent person. One might argue, then, that it's not murder to end the life of any child before she reaches consciousness, but we don't know how long after birth personhood arrives for each new child, so it's completely logical to use their independence as the dividing line for when full rights are given to a new human being.
Using independence also solves the problem of dealing with premature babies. Although a preemie is obviously still only a potential person, by virtue of its independence from the mother, we give it the full rights of a conscious person. This saves us from setting some other arbitrary date of when we consider a new human being a full person. Older cultures used to set it at two years of age, or even older. Modern religious cultures want to set it at conception, which is simply wishful thinking on their part. As we've clearly demonstrated, a single-cell zygote is no more a person that a human hair follicle.
But that doesn't stop religious fanatics from dumping their judgements and their anger on top of women who choose to exercise the right to control their bodies. It's the ultimate irony that people who claim to represent a loving God resort to scare tactics and fear to support their mistaken beliefs.
It's even worse when you consider that most women who have an abortion have just made the most difficult decision of their life. No one thinks abortion is a wonderful thing. No one tries to get pregnant just so they can terminate it. Even though it's not murder, it still eliminates a potential person, a potential daughter, a potential son. It's hard enough as it is. Women certainly don't need others telling them it's a murder.
It's not. On the contrary, abortion is an absolutely moral choice for any woman wishing to control her body.
-
That was a rather good eassy that you found, Korn.
I find all of the points that were mentioned in there to be right on target and true.
Perhaps all those anti-abortion women should stop menustrating every month, they might be killing a potention person. And I also might be aiding in the destruction of millions of potential people by having that "Geek Girls" section for some people to "look at".
-
Good choice of the word "found." As opposed to the word "wrote."
But it is a good essay. Where was it yanked from?
-
about a month ago, i was driving home from school, and i stopped at this light at an intersection, and it was pouring rain. i mean like pouring, cats and dogs and such...like really coming down.
..and standing in the corner of the intersection, was this old woman, couldn't have been more than 70, holding a wooden sign twice her size. on the sign it said ABORTION: and underneath it was a painting of a dead baby.
now, i'm pro-choice, but when someone's that devout, it really makes you think...
-
Recently I've seen a pro-life abortion video called "The Silent Scream" from 1984. It basically showed an abortion...but hey, if you need one you get one. Some people can't even afford to keep themselves safe letalone there baby!
-
about a month ago, i was driving home from school, and i stopped at this light at an intersection, and it was pouring rain. i mean like pouring, cats and dogs and such...like really coming down.
..and standing in the corner of the intersection, was this old woman, couldn't have been more than 70, holding a wooden sign twice her size. on the sign it said ABORTION: and underneath it was a painting of a dead baby.
now, i'm pro-choice, but when someone's that devout, it really makes you think...
Quite. My thought would be "Freakin loon". People who go out of their way for exposure-whorage (I'm looking at you PETA) earn my spite quickly, and I'm all for animal rights myself. Just don't harass me into becomin a vegan and we're all friends, heh. And now that I'm off-topic, I'll go back on.
If there's one thing that'll get me to become pro-life, it's yet another crazed freak in pouring rain holding up a graphic sign showing the oft-unused (isn't it illegal in most states unless the mother is in mortal danger?) partial birth abortion to illustrate why abortion is mean. May she and her ilk be in front of an abortion clinic protesting next time someone decides to blow one up.
-
I'm gonna hafta give Bino an "AMEN!" on that one...
-
amen? mmhmm...