what’s wrong with men?
As a pregnant woman, I was horrified to read a recent post by Prayson Daniel, entitled “What is Wrong with Abortion?”. Nothing could get my chemicals in a furious spin quite like a post by a man, full of comments by men, arguing about something they can never experience and never understand. We can thank men for the vast majority of the most unethical acts of violence, genocide and destruction against living, breathing independent human beings that we see in the world today, and that have occurred throughout the history of humankind. Let’s allow them space to argue for an end to the needless deaths their fellow men cause around the world in the name of power, money, religion and fear. Let’s leave it to us women to decide as individuals if we have the necessary mental and material resources to continue with pregnancies we may or may not have chosen to initiate, without being burdened by the opinions of clueless people going through the mechanical motion of reducing these decisions to a mathematical puzzle with a correct answer. Until you have lived the full life of every woman who makes a decision to terminate a pregnancy, your dry reasoning based on set piece arguments is absolutely meaningless.
So, what’s wrong with men like this? They’re arrogant. They think they know everything. They’re used to power. They think they deserve to control everything. Men, on this, and many other topics, you know virtually nothing.
Well yes, and you are looking for an argument? Hey, their sperm, they get to call the shots. Just like they do with everything else. Oh, I’ll shut up, and hope you are feeling well. Clearly well enough to rant.
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Did you read the post? Repulsive. A clear illustration of everything that is wrong with the world and the horrendous decisions so often driven by men.
I’m much better thanks, although that post might have made me even more furious a few weeks ago. Hope things are well with you and you’re keeping Ark under control. 😉
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I scanned it. There’s no point raising my blood pressure. Been there, read that, seen it all before. I haven’t got the patience to write anything except STFU in those circumstances.
I just am so not getting into the woman’s body is her own debate, but a quick five minutes of nothing gives some tosser the right to dictate to do what she does with it, or the lets argue this ethically debate, or hells teeth the flipping religious debate. Aaagh!
He needs reining in of course, he is running quite wild without your presence. Posted the most awful music last night for his limping blogpal which I thought could possibly be me. And no I’m not well. A broken ankle in your fifties takes a long time. So, in Arky’s words, I’m limping.
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Haha, he always posts awful music! I think I’ve liked (in a lukewarm sense) two of his offerings over the course of a year. Sorry to hear about your ankle, I did see some images at some point, ouch.
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I’m waiting for him to post Verdi’s Dies Irae, or Rossini’s petite solemn mass or whatever it is called. Or anything really that isn’t strange tuneless guitar music. I think there was a comment about education and exposing me to different music. Or something like that. It’s not working very well, the Podenco tolerates it better than I do. Spanish guitar music on the other hand…
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I do not know your history. I do not know your issue with men in abortion debate. Yes, I am arrogant. No, I do not think I know everything. Yes, I used and will always use power of critical reasoning to argue for what I think it true. I wish I deserved to control everything but if could then I would not need to argue for what I think is true but simply apply it, which I think is wrong. Men, like me, have wives and children. Where I lack in women’s worldview, I ask my wife and women who I call family and friends.
If abortion is what I argued it, in my three purely philosophical arguments, then is not a private personal issue. It is an ethical issue. Yes, the fetus finds its home in woman’s womb, but that is not a license to believe that therefore it is a women issue. If you believe it is so, then present your case. What is wrong with your article is that it shut down dialogue and appeal to emotions and your personal issue with men.
I do not know your history, but I know killing a dialogue by appealling to personal feelings, emotion and issues with men, like me, is not a way forward but backward. It is irrelevant what men like me are, what is relevant is the case presented. We are to deal with the message not the medium.
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Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I think I made my key point here:
“Until you have lived the full life of every woman who makes a decision to terminate a pregnancy, your dry reasoning based on set piece arguments is absolutely meaningless.”
One of the most telling aspects of your post is that you based your arguments purely around the whether the developing baby is a person with a right to life. You made no reference to the right of this potentially sentient being to a life with love and support, to a safe environment – does a developing baby equally have the choice not to be forced into existence when the mother has every reason to believe they will have a horrendous life?
And, worst of all, you have no interest in the physical and mental effects of pregnancy and birth on a woman. Why does her life become irrelevant on becoming pregnant?
You seem to be assuming:
1. Every sperm/egg combination has a ‘right’ to be born. Complicated. We wouldn’t want to deny anyone life.
2. The right of developing baby to be born over-rides any concerns about the quality of life the fully formed adult would have.
3. The right of the developing baby to be born over-rides any concerns the mother may have about her personal welfare.
Your post is inspired by set-piece arguments made by men who have never experienced pregnancy and birth, and at no point do you refer to any real stories of women who have had to make this choice. Can you not see how removed from reality the whole exercise is?
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It is promising and warming to read your response. As the comment below point out the flaw in reasoning that unless P experience Q then P point of view on Q is absolutely meaningless. For you to be consistence with your view, then you cannot judge men, for you need to live full life of every man who makes a decision to question the ethics of abortion, or else your issue with men is absolutely meaningless. This is absurd. Most of us have not experience being sexually abused. Do you mean to say unless we live a full life of very sexually abused person, our anger and rage against such acts is absolute meaningless?
Moreover why is it “[u]ntil [I] have lived the full life of every woman who makes a decision to terminate a pregnancy, [my] dry reasoning based on set piece arguments is absolutely meaningless.”? This is purely an assertion that needs defending! It is a bold claim. You do not expect me to hold it without any good reasons offered for it.
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Your argument here is utter nonsense. Short of the obvious, what exactly can men can do or experience that women cannot? Pregnancy is a wholly unique biochemical, physiological, psychological event fraught with all sorts of dangers. What occurs, occurs within their bodies, and their bodies alone. You have no more right over that then woman have a right over demanding you don’t wank.
Now, you like to dance around this question, you try everything in your powers to avoid it, but let me present it to you one more time. To advance your claim that you have some right to interfere in a woman’s pregnancy (and by doing do, usurp her bodily autonomy), clearly state when you believe life occurs in the foetus.
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John, there was no argument there! If there is show it? It appears you raised and attacked a Strawman 🙂 I pointed out that her logic, namely P has to fully live a life of Q to have a say on Q particular moral choice/or whatever belief, is flaw. I used her logic to show that by her own token she cannot pass judgment on men since she has to fully live a life of every man to pass her judgement on them. Which is absurd.
John, I know your dancing steps. The case here is not about abortion but the blogger issue with men, including you, who debate about abortion, the issue she believe we know nothing of because we are to live a fully life of a woman, if I understood her correctly.
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What nonsense! 10,000 years of observation of men-in-power gives Violet every right to make a value call on the ways of men, and their abuses of power. Honestly, Prayson, you’re exposing your astounding ignorance and narrow-mindedness here. Let me ask you: does your wife have a right to demand you stop wanking? If not, why not? Please be specific.
Unfortunately, wiggling won’t get you out of the question I presented. If you cannot address the question (when life begins in the foetus) then every allusion you try to make to killing is utterly and entirely meaningless. And you know this. You know this fully well, hence your evasive maneuvers. It’s like you saying, “I know unicorns don’t exist, but let’s talk about their migratory patterns.”
So, Prayson, if you want to talk about concepts of killing, then tell me: when does life begin in the foetus?
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John, what you state is called the fallacy of special pleading. As I pointed out, attack on a person or group is irrelevant in a dialogue. The medium is not a message and it is the message that needs addressing not the medium. The case I presented could be presented by a woman.
I do not wank. If I did, then yes she has the right to demand that I stop. She could of example present me arguments to why wanking is destroying our marriage or our sexual life. To save our sexual life or marriage, she is correct to demand that I, if were wanking, to stop.
As I stated none of the three argument cares when life begin. Thus it is irrelevant for my case when life began. Read my three arguments and show where they demand that life of a fetus begin at a certain point! Simply put, my argument do not demand when life began, nor personhood, nor rights, nor soul et cetera. They are philosophical arguments that explore what is wrong in killing one of us and apply the explanation to fetus, regardless of when their lives begin, or whether they are persons e.t.c.
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The examples you present are rooted in reality. Good. They could indeed be used by your wife if your wanking was affecting your marriage. Conversely, you haven’t cited a single aspect of “reality” to justify your desire to meddle in the functioning of a woman’s body; to arrogantly interfere in her bodily autonomy. You might try and say discussing the onset of life is irrelevant, but you look tremendously foolish trying to do so. It is the absolute crux of the matter, as you are trying to establish grounds for using emotive words like “killing.” As much as you’d like it, Prayson, you can’t have it both ways. You either grow an intellectual spine and present the case for when life begins in the foetus (therefore justifying the use of the word “killing”), or concede your philosophical meanderings are utterly meaningless. It was, after all, your insistence on using such emotive words that inspired Violets post. Therefore, if you have any intellectual integrity, you’d address the question as presented. If you evade it, it’s the equivalent of, as I pointed out, discussing the migratory patterns of unicorns. Meaningless, absurd, and inconsequential.
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It seams your desperate to have your dance danced. I know your moves and I am not moved to dance with you on the issue that is irrelevant to my arguments. I do not care how you view me John, I am not intimidated 🙂 I care less on how I am viewed. I care what I presented.
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And what you have presented is entirely meaningless; a complete waste of words and space… Unless, of course, you can rationally and logically justify using the deliberately provocative words you have chosen to use.
Evidently, it appears, you cannot however rise to this fundamental standard of common academic adeptness, and intellectual decency. Instead, you choose to discuss the migratory behaviour of unicorns, and deceive yourself into believing that you’re actually interfacing with the rational, real world.
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Well John. That is me. I am a classical Christian theist. And that is you. Whatever your tag yourself. We hold two different ways of understanding the world.
I am not intimidated by ridicules of unicorns. It does not work with me. I am not intimidated by personal character calling of my stand. What catches me is critical thinking, art of logic, positive dialogues that seeks not to convert one into a different worldview, but to understand them, positively offer contructive critiques.
I will always return kindness even when my stand is ridicule and my character down pulled. This is me. That is you. Thank you for the exchange.
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You’re confusing intimidation with trying to keep you intellectually honest, Prayson. You consciously and quite deliberately used an emotive and provocative word (“killing”) in your opening sentence, and I correctly challenged you on it. I asked you to justify using that word by establishing precisely when “life” emerges in the foetus. Without establishing that most basic definition, your allusion to “killing” is entirely vacant, illogical, and irrational. One, after all, cannot “kill” something that is not “alive,” correct? That’s just common sense. I’m not sure what they teach you at your bible school, but in real universities we learn to construct rational arguments that can be (and must be) defended. As such, again, I was attempting to keep you intellectually honest by encouraging you to rise to a higher academic level which I suspect you’re not exposed to in your bible study groups.
Regretfully, however, you chose to evade this most basic of lettered requests… and continue to evade it. As I pointed out with the unicorn example, your complete failure to support your opening sentence in a logical, rational, and coherent manner rendered every following word trivial, at best, and meaningless and vain at worst. Why discuss the migratory patterns of unicorns if you cannot first establish unicorns exist? Why discuss “killing,” if you cannot first establish something can be “killed”?
I think you can see the absurdity in it, yes?
So again, don’t confuse intimidation with trying to keep you intellectually honest. In the future, if you’re going to play with words, I’d suggest you think a little harder about what you write, and try to rise to a higher standard of academic practices regarding rational argument presentation.
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The point I was trying to make is that you cannot analyse abortion as a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ issue (something with correct answer) without reference to circumstance. Your post argues the ethics of terminating a potential human being’s development isolated from any other factors. If we took this attitude to killing in self-defence, we would brand it unethical in every case, wouldn’t we? It’s blinkered, unconstructive, doesn’t reflect the painful and difficult decisions that many women come to, and suggests that the billions of women who have taken this decision over the course of history knew less about making this decision for their lives and the lives of their families, than you with your verbal flowchart.
Your limitations as a man in not being able to properly understand the biological/psychological impact of pregnancy or caring to consider what factors bring women to make this choice, are made clear by a post on this issue with no reference to actual women – the people who usually make the decision – and what drives their decisions.
My over-riding concern on this issue is that there are many people like you campaigning to remove choice on this matter from women, by using such insufficient and flawed reasoning. You will note that in regions of the world where abortion is illegal, rates of abortion by illegal means are actually higher. It goes hand in hand with lack of access to education, equality and choice.
A much more useful discussion would be the ethics of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy and how as a society we can help people (both men and women) avoid it in the first place. And to do this, we should look to the countries with the lowest abortion rates – which are unsurprisingly the countries with most choice, education and access to birth control e.g. Switzerland
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/the-secret-of-switzerland-s-low-abortion-rate/33585760
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So, if men cannot judge female things, it stands to reason that women cannot judge male things, such as the examples you gave above about destruction and war and all that fun stuff.
Can other women pass judgement on the morality of abortion?Something tells me that if some lady argued along the same lines you would be spouting off on “internalized misogyny”.
Did the fellow give rational arguments for his position? Are women capable of understanding and refuting rational arguments? If so, shouldn’t you engage him on that level?
See, I doubt you are as mad as you claim: what is really happening is you don’t want to engage the arguments (good or bad as they may be) so you retreat to this fallacy that your opinions or actions are correct by virtue of your sex and your emotional state. Faking “outrage” on the internet is an attempt to win an argument without having to argue.
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^This
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Cute.
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So, Brandon, your wife has a right to demand you lay off the porn (which you said you’re addicted to) and stop wanking?
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Well, I am no longer addicted! But, in general, yes, if she considers partaking in porn an immoral action, she can tell me not to do it. She doesn’t have to have a penis to have a valid argument. And, I don’t have to have a uterus to tell someone that abortion is an immoral action. Of course we consider people with direct experience to have more meaningful moral opinions on those subjects, but that does not immediately invalidate other people’s moral opinions. Otherwise we get experience-bigotry. “You can’t say that because your not ______ or you haven’t done _______”.
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And then what’s it called when someone falsely identifies something as being immoral? Barefaced lying, or is it something worse, something more sinister in its production and intent?
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Hopefully no one is lying about what they think is immoral, but I suppose if one had something to gain like political points, one could lie. Otherwise it would be an oversensitive conscience or unreasonable, unexamined morality.
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Thanks for commenting dp. Delightful to see you as ever. As I’ve said to Prayson, I don’t see anything rational about discussing the ethics of an action with no reference to the circumstances that lead a person to take the action, without any reference to the consequences of taking or not taking the action, and without any reference to the particular biological circumstances of the decision-maker. If a man sees fit to analyse abortion as a right/wrong subject that requires no reference to any of these issues, then I think it’s safe to say the man doesn’t properly understand pregnancy.
Did you actually have anything to say on the topic or did you just want to call a woman irrational and emotional, so you could avoid the fact that you too know nothing about it?
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Hmmm. The other day you claimed that a person’s action is utterly unintelligible to another by virtue of their sex. I disagree for the reasons above. Today you are making a much more moderate claim, that circumstances need to be taken into account when judging an action; in this you are correct.
To use the example of abortion: personally, I have never known a woman who has had an abortion who was not under duress. The father of her child and her parents were either, at best, emotionally distant, or, at worst, trying to emotionally and financially extort her into having an abortion. Under these circumstances, you cannot say the young women were completely free, so as far as their personal culpability is concerned, I withhold judgment.
But it is an error to claim that because of mitigating individual circumstances abortion is, in general, morally neutral. The individual and the general are two different levels.
If we are talking, not on the individual, subjective level of girl X whose loving daddy refuses to pay for college unless she gets an abortion, or whose heroic boyfriend runs home to Canada to avoid child support payments, but on the objective, general level of an act of violence on an incipient human being, then abortion is evil.
And you are expecting? Congratulations!
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“on the objective, general level of an act of violence on an incipient human being, then abortion is evil.” I could just as easily say that on the objective general level of an act of violence on a functioning, fully sentient human being, forcing a woman to carry and give birth to a child she doesn’t want, for whatever reason, is evil. I could also say that forcing a person into existence because their genetic code was made in error, and it’s known their quality of life is likely to be horrendous, is also evil.
Branding actions wholesale ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is childish. People need to make their own decisions based on the information they have available. ‘Killing’ is generally branded evil but as a society we agree it is acceptable in self-defence and, increasingly, in order to avoid long and painful deaths.
Yes, I am pregnant again. And knowing what pregnancy and birth are like, I would never wish an unwanted pregnancy on any woman. I’m lucky enough to have had a level of sex education, access to birth control and personal experiences that have enabled me to experience this as a purely voluntary undertaking. We all know this isn’t the case for millions of women out there. Calling abortion evil/unethical helps no-one.
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Ha! Thank you Violet very much for setting me to my place by my sex and gender. 😉
I think dry argumentation is in place even in this issue. I have no other means to evaluate it, as I have never been a woman, nor have I had to make the choise as one. However, I am a voter and a member of the society and I feel it is my ethical obligation to have an opinion and that opinion is, that in a democratic society we have to protect the rights of all, especially the minorities, the weak and helpless. Equal rights to those as the majority expects, when their expectation is logically justified.
I really do not understand what is all the fuss around this issue really about (perhaps partly because I am a man). It is not such a hard ethical question. The rights of one person end where the rights of a nother person begin. Correct? It really does not matter wether a fetus is a person, or not. As long as it is totally dependable on the mother – and no other person, it can not have rights over the rights of the mother. We do not force organ donations, even if it could save the lives of allready living and breething individuals, of whose personhood there is no question. Not even if the potential donator allready once promised to donate something, but then decided to recant that promise. Do we? Equally, we have no right to force any woman to support a developing individual inside, or outside the womb, if she chooses not to. It is her choise. It is irrelevant, that we – the soceity – can support a born child regardless of the mother, but not the fetus. That should tell us something of the actual personhood and status as a human individual of the fetus. Right?
If a woman makes such a hard choise, as not to continue pregnancy, after having faced the emotional stress of losing the potential child, she has every reason not to. If that choise is flippant to her, then is it not best that she did not have a child? Why is this so complex and hard to understand for some people? Do they not care for the wellbeing of the potential child?
Some more dry reasoning: The division line in this discussion runs deep between the religious and non-religious people. Why? Have the gods spoken to the religious people directly, or somehow magically through their consciences? Or is it, much more likely, a reprecussion of the sociological phenomenon, that religions as cultural traits evolve to protect children in order to promote and further the cultural evoloution of the religion through generations. Most religions do not get that many converts, it is by conquest and breeding, that they survive and increase. And by those methods they compete with each other. Hence, it is very strong cultural evolution tactics for a religion to condemn the natural right of the woman to choose. And it is easy to insert, because it is not a simple choise, when we humans are animals, that are rather aware of the possible future. Even though the religious people – men and women – argue this issue often with seemingly sincere sympathy for the potential for a person an unborn represents, there is something insidious about their arguments. Why is it, that they are so concerned about the unborn, but not the orphans who could get better life, if openly homosexuals could have the same adoption rights as the not so openly gays? But religious morals does not require logic, it only requires obidience to some particular god, and curiously enough, that god always argrees with the conscience of the individual religious person making the claim on what the particular god thinks about morality. Funny that.
There is a reason why we celebrate birthdays and not conceptiondays. I would be more inclined to believe the religious argumentation comes from a clean table after they stopped celebrating birthdays and instead started to celebrate conception dates. It is hard to logically argue with people who sincerely believe there are spirit entities, even thought they know there are no actual evidence of any such. Besides, if they really believe these “innocent babies” go to heaven, why are the Christians in particular so eager to submit them to the “sin” and possible eternal damnation in the “lake of fire” by the experiencing this world? Surely they do understand that unwanted children are more likely to end up on “sinfull” lives and miserable ends? Or maybe they do not understand the entire issue. As if there was some emotional block for dry reasoning and obvious conclusions…
However, I must admit that, if I truly believed, that my society was sanctioning the murder of thousands of babies a year, I would take up arms against such a government, no matter how popular it was. Maybe this is because I am an agressive male ape, but as long as a religious person claims to actually believe abortion is murder, that person is hardly even equal to the German who silently looked by when the socialists, Jews and disabled people were taken to the concentration camps – and did nothing.
PS. I do not read the Preyson blog, because commenting there is futile. He is nice and polite and has you run around endless loops of nothing untill he tires and disappears. Very Christian of him. I bet he did not bring any new arguments to the table. Did he?
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Hi Raut, lovely to hear from you! I pretty much agree with everything you say, which is a relief because I thought we were in for another divergence for a minute! You’re right that in some sense dry argumentation does have a place in issues like this, my objection was that Prayson’s post argued in isolation to any reference to women and the issues they might face in pregnancy. It was dry to the point of meaning less. A fetus is a life, we should kill living things therefore abortion is wrong. It was absurd, and the kind of argument that I think could only be made by creatures who would never have to face such a decision. Perhaps my fury at type of male tipped over, hehe.
I don’t comment on his blog either. I don’t think I would meet his comment policy for a start, and I also find the endless loops of nothing and subsequent disappearance a waste of time. Still, at least he’s having these discussions in the open and is willing engage in his own limited style.
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Got you! 😉 I must admit I took a peep at the Prayson blog. I was not surprised by the lack of vision there. As I said he is doing all he can to be nice and wise, but he has this obstacle to tackle with, that he has not yet overcome – namely religion.
I think Prayson is a good example of what kind of harm religion actually causes. It makes a good willing person like Prayson totally blind to the realities of any situation he thinks is morally coloured by his particular religion in a certain way. Instead of really trying to find out about any truth in any given matter, he simply tries to excuse the allready existing morals given to him by some demagogue. It has to be a demagogue, because in no point of the Bible (the alledged word of his particular god) is abortion actually forbidden. Not at least in as many words as rebelling against slavery, or eating pork.
After having a looksee, I now understand what you Violet ment by the “dry reasoning”. I will not respond directly to arguments made by Prayson even here, because Ignostic Atheist has done that perfectly below and because John Zande has not been able to get Prayson even to admit that the first premise of his claim is invalid as there can be no killing before there is actual life. However, I must say, that you were right to use the word “dry” as the quoted arguments Prayson used were totally dried out of any context. Is this what really happens when a philosopher tries to get to the basics of any issue, that the subject comes so dried out of all content and context, that it no longer makes any sense, and can be used to support the most ridiculous political agendas?
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“Is this what really happens when a philosopher tries to get to the basics of any issue, that the subject comes so dried out of all content and context, that it no longer makes any sense, and can be used to support the most ridiculous political agendas?”
This does seem to be a common occurrence …
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It is so tragicomic, that I do not know wether to laugh or cry.
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Men have caused most problems in the world because men have always been at the helm. This is not to say that women would surely do better given the reins, but given the poor record of male domination so far, I see no reason not to give it an old college try. I suspect less testosterone in leadership could only be a good thing. As a compromise, would you accept eunuchs for public office?
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That’s the spirit! We should have a century trial and see how things go.
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Having briefly perused Prayson’s blog, I am struck by the lack of nuance in the arguments. If he’s so focused on potential to be, then why not encourage wanton fucking in the streets between strangers? It seems such a waste not to put every ovulation to good use; to make the most of your genetic material. Every egg could unite with a sperm, and could become a real live human with feelings and friends and a multiplicity of cells. So why not fuck in the streets?
Because it’s the whole point of the exercise to control who and how and when you fuck.
So here is my explanation as to why killing is wrong:
Killing is wrong for the same reason that death is sad: it is a loss of a lifetime of experiences and interpersonal connections. Given those experiences, the people connected are deprived of future experiences which can be known, to a reasonable degree.
For the 90 year old man who is looking forward to death, it is known that the future is bleak. The sadness is there, but is not interrupted by anger for loss.
For the 12 year old girl lost in a car crash with a drunk driver, the loss is great, for the connections were strong and it is known for certain that she was far short of the average age of death and was well on her way to becoming a woman herself, with a uterus firmly under the command of a man.
For the small bundle of a few hundred undifferentiated cells that just got vacuumed out of a uterus, the connections are few if not non-existent, and the experience lost to the world are nil. The potential gained, however may be great, for the mother may have known that she would be a terrible mother, or was financially incapable of adequately supporting a child, or was in an abusive relationship which she did not wish to tie herself or a child to.
This contrasts with each of Prayson’s examples, which focus exclusively on what might have been. An unlimited hypothetical future can be as glittering as you can imagine, so I find my approach to be much more realistic, emphasizing what might be given what was.
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Extremely well said, IA
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Ha…some of my favorite cartoon characters all in one spot.
Ah…DP you old Dickhead you. Still shooting little furry animals for fun? Still dreaming of a couple of teenage mistress who will give you a boner every time they down a Rhino or Lion or some-such.
Yes, everyone must really listen to a prize twot like you. You’re better off going for a run in the woods. Maybe you’ll get savaged by a rabid beaver. And a rabid beaver is the only ‘beaver’ someone like you should be allowed anywhere near.
Prayson’s arguments are equally as gag-worthy. If you have a god in the mix and one with a capital ‘H’ for he you pretty much know you are going to get shafted, one way or another.
As for Brandon…well
Lol…
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Jings, you’ve not been working on refining your comment style much over the last couple of months, have you? At least you didn’t get too stuck into Brandon. But seriously, why do you enjoy the personal insults so much?
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Ah, well DP recently had a nice post celebrating shooting animals just for fun. Did you read it? Can’t recall.
I was actually being restrained, mindful of your current delicate situation – not wanting to upset you that much.
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Premise 1: A fetus will become a human being in the future.
Premise 2: It is illegal to kill a human being.
Conclusion: Therefore, it should be illegal to kill a fetus.
Some want to debate when exactly the future human is really alive. Sad. Here’s your answer… The moment sperm and egg are united the process starts. The result of this union is the production of a Zygote, or fertilized egg, initiating prenatal development. The future human never stops growing and feeds off the mother. All future humans start out real small and grow, it’s alive from conception. To elect to stop an otherwise viable future human one has to terminate it. Words synonymous with terminate; abort, bring an end to, stop, die.
So, is it a real stretch to equate the elective termination of a future human as killing it? No.
Speaking as an American, I understand we are a nation of laws and the law says it is legal to abort an otherwise viable future human being, up to a certain time, but that fact does not make it right.
Abortion is not just another ‘procedure’ in medicine. Having read about these ‘procedures’ from doctors and pathologist there is virtually nothing as disgusting as the suction causing ripping and destruction of formed placental and fetal tissue that occurs with an abortion, not to mention the pain imposed on the fetus being torn apart. This is not meant to be sensational, although it is. This is to make the point that medical ‘procedures’ are to fix a problem and nearly all are neat and clean with this exception.
When physicians remove a uterus, for example, they do their best to remove it intact. Not so with an abortion. The goal is simple evacuation. Doctors are sworn to stand up for life and to minimize suffering for all patients. Those who perform abortions have violated the Hippocratic oath. They forget that the fetus is a patient too.
Roy
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Roy, please detail the legal, medical, and scientific definition of “death”
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Hello John,
dictionary.reference.com/browse/death
1. the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.
Legal death is a legal pronouncement by a qualified person that further medical care is not appropriate and that a patient should be considered dead under the law.
Medical death is the irreversible cessation of all vital functions especially as indicated by permanent stoppage of the heart, respiration, and brain activity.
thefreedictionary.com/Death+(science)
The end of life of an organism or cell. In humans and animals, death is manifested by the permanent cessation of vital organic functions, including the absence of heartbeat, spontaneous breathing, and brain activity. Cells die as a result of external injury or by an orderly, programmed series of self-destructive events known as apoptosis. The most common causes of death for humans in well-developed countries are cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, certain chronic diseases such as diabetes and emphysema, lung infections, and accidents.
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I didn’t ask for a dictionary definition, Roy. Here, I’ll help you out:
In 1979, the Conference of the Medical Royal Colleges, “Diagnosis of death” declared: “brain death represents the stage at which a patient becomes truly dead.”
This was updated in the 1980s and 1990s to state that brainstem death, as diagnosed by UK criteria, is the point at which “all functions of the brain have permanently and irreversibly ceased.”
Further still updated in 1995 (to present), “It is suggested that ‘irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness, combined with irreversible loss of the capacity to breathe’ should be regarded as the definition of death’
This is quite clear: The legal, medical and scientific definition of Death is the cessation of brain activity.
Now, a foetus does not begin to exhibit sustained EEG activity until week 25. So, do tell me, Roy, how can you “kill” something that cannot “die”?
Please be specific in your answer….
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Where is your source link?????? I gave you two as per your request for “definitions”, which boil down to “cessation of ALL vital functions”. Brain death is not the end-all in every case, ever heard of “unplugging Grandma”? Sometimes we have to unplug a brain dead patient for them to actually die.
Are you really arguing it is perfectly OK the fetus can be terminated up to the 25th week because it has not yet developed enough to register an EEG? You have to find a different angle because to “die” and “kill” is synonymous with “terminate” and “abort”.
The prenatal development of a fetus happens in stages. It has a heartbeat around week 4-5. Wouldn’t you agree an organism with a beating heart is alive? The brain is the most complex organ, it make sense the most complex organ would take the longest to fully develop.
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Dictionary entries don’t equal legal, medical and scientific definitions, Roy. And by all means, look up the Conference of the Medical Royal Colleges yourself.
Now, you haven’t answered my question, Roy.
How can something be “killed” if it cannot “die”? How can you turn something “Off” if it is not “On”?
Please be specific….
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And here’s the US equivalent:
Uniform Determination of Death Act (§ 1, U.L.A. [1980]): “An individual whose brain stem (lower brain) has died is not able to maintain vegetative functions of life, including respiration, circulation, and swallowing. An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory function, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.”
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Ha. It started as the Uniform Brain Death Act in 1978
In 1980 the Uniform Determination of Death Act was created to replace the UBDA because technology can keep a person alive even when the brain is dead.
You can get educated at
uniformlaws.org/ActSummary.aspx?title=Determination%20of%20Death%20Act
You keep asking the same questions I keep answering, strange.
“How can something be “killed” if it cannot “die”?”
The fetus can die. It can be terminated, or “removed in pieces” if you like, at which point the organisms developed vital organs will cease to function thereby cause its life to end.
and
“How can you turn something “Off” if it is not “On”?”
Not “on”? Strange question. Know any pregnant women? How about asking Violet if the baby she is carrying is “on”? I’d be curious to see what she thinks, if her baby is on or off…….Oh, my bad, maybe you mean since it has not yet developed enough to register an EEG it isn’t on and terminating it with a clear conscious is OK.
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“How about asking Violet if the baby she is carrying is “on”?”
Do you want me to refer my imagination/emotion/hope for the future or to science? There is a living creature developing my body but I know from science it is not yet sentient and cannot feel pain. Of course I would never do anything to endanger its development and I am excited, protective and emotional about it’s impending appearance as an independent being. However, I chose to be pregnant, and I’m as confident as I can be that we’ll be able to provide and stable and loving existence for the developing human. It’s a selfish act having children, forcing existence on yet another unsuspecting clump of cells for our own fulfilment. It’s a desperate act terminating a pregnancy because as you point out, it’s not such a simple procedure and it may lead to lingering ‘what ifs’ for all concerned. But that doesn’t make it unethical, if on balance, a woman decides that she is unable to proceed with growing the developing creature within her own body.
Back to your original comment:
“Premise 1: A fetus will become a human being in the future.
Premise 2: It is illegal to kill a human being.
Conclusion: Therefore, it should be illegal to kill a fetus.”
You’ve missed another conclusion that would follow from such a nonsensical basic analysis with, in any case, a flawed premise. It should then also be illegal to kill in self defence. Just like Prayson, you choose to ignore the fact that there are circumstances that lead women to make this decision. Just like Prayson, you choose to ignore that pregnancy and birth are gruelling experiences at the best of times and for those women who didn’t choose to be pregnant (through force, ignorance or error) attempting to force them to continue with an unwanted pregnancy definitely is unethical, and unwise. Look at the horrors that unfold in countries where abortion is illegal:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3194680.stm
Finally, why Christians particularly insist on fighting against access to abortion is a mystery to all. If they took time to read their Bibles they would find no support for their misdirected campaign. I’m sure you are familiar with passages such as Numbers 5: 20-22 and Hosea 13:16. Your god as depicted in the Bible not only has failed to proved any kind of condemnation of abortion (which has been around since the dawn of time) but in the few cases where pregnancy is mentioned, he seems to relish to terminating them.
If you want to cut down on abortion rates, provide more sex education, access to birth control and choice for all. The evidence is clear.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/the-secret-of-switzerland-s-low-abortion-rate/33585760
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Nice reply Violet. Happy to know you agree the future human being inside you is alive (“living”) but I highly doubt you refer to it as a “creature” when at the doctor or when around family and friends. Here though you refer to your baby as a “creature” to lessen it’s worth, that a baby can be terminated with no remorse. Sad.
If you reread my original post I never objected to legalized abortion. In fact I feel it is better that it is legal than not. When it was illegal it happened in back alley’s with shirt hangers or here or in Mexico in a not-so sterile situation. As well, I never advocated forcing any women to go to term, yet I do find it strange a woman would have unprotected sex knowing sex is how they get pregnant. It’s appalling some have such a flippant attitude towards the innocent life growing inside them that they can just have it sucked out like it’s worthless.
Error? Ignorance? Really Violet? A grueling experience? Think about what your saying here. A women has sex in error not knowing this causes pregnancy and gets pregnant. Oh my! Well since she didn’t know this would happen, and it’s such a grueling experience, let’s terminate the future human. There are thousands of couples wanting to adopt an infant and pay all the mothers expenses. Sad even one life should be extinguished because of the grueling experience.
Incest and rape are heinous and despicable crimes for which the perpetrator deserves the full punishment under the law. But the child in this case is another victim of the crime, not its perpetrator. Justice for a crime requires the punishment of the guilty party, not the murder of an innocent, whether inside or outside the womb. What if the raped women was in a coma, the baby is delivered by cesarean section and she wakes up two years later and requests the child to be killed, would you kill that child? If you won’t kill that child, why would you kill that child when s/he is inside the womb?
I never took a Biblical stance in my post. No religion is needed. Yet you and John want to pull God into the discussion. Why? You don’t believe the Bible or in God, none of it really happened right? So why mention any of it? And why pull 1 or 2 versus out of context to help your position. The versus you and John highlight, pulled out of context to the chapters they are in, do not have the meaning that you assign to them. To assign a false meaning to a couple lines of Scripture, that you do not even believe in the first place, does not help you.
Anyway, abortion is legal, probably better that it is, at least the mother will live another day, still doesn’t make it right and good for the little innocent one.
Thank you Violet. Best wishes to you and your family, the future and present!
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I hope you’re not going to run away without answering my question, Roy.
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Already did, surely your not that dense? Let me, one more time, explain it.
You are trying to correlate the fact that we will (you, me, all of us) eventually will become brain dead, to the fact that a developing fetus does not develop to the stage of measurable EEG until about week 26. So, since it has not yet reached the stage of measurable EEG until about wk26 it isn’t alive until then. So, if it isn’t alive til then how can you kill something not alive.
Does anyone else see the absurdity in this thought process? Even Violet admits inside her is a living creature, not to mention the little one she has developed a beating heart at about the age of 4 weeks…beating heart, developing brain, alive. Left to mature to term our expectation and hope is that her baby will arrive healthy and beautiful.
Maybe I just come at this from a different perspective than you. I think little ones should have rights and be protected no matter which side of the womb there found.
Anyway, abortion is legal, probably better that it is, at least the mother will live another day, still doesn’t make it right and good for the little innocent one.
Peace
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Roy, not surprisingly, you have yet again failed to address the question, and sidestepping it isn’t going to work, either. Your allusion to specified life is in fabulous and irreparable error. There is no point, ever, when the foetus becomes “alive.” It was never inorganic and suddenly becomes organic. Life began on earth 3.8 billion years ago and hasn’t been interrupted since. “Life” does not magically spring forth at conception, or at any phase through the foetuses development. The egg and the sperm are already parts of the living system; a system that began 3.8 billion years ago.
Consult your online dictionary for the differences between something inorganic and something organic, if it helps, Roy.
As such, the only measure possible to identify the onset of defined human life is sustained EEG activity. The absence of sustained EEG activity is the medial, legal and scientific definition of death. Therefore, Roy, to argue that something can be “killed,” which I remind you was the language used by Prayson and yourself, before it can “die” is patently and categorically absurd.
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What? News flash John. The egg and the sperm are not organisms. Not until they join together do we then have an organism. The zygote/embryo is a whole distinct human organism, that is, a human being, a self-developing member of the species Homo sapiens, at a very early stage of life.
I’ll let Dr. Maureen L. Condic, a Berkeley-educated neurobiologist and professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine, explain why the human organism begins at conception.
“From the moment of sperm-egg fusion, a human zygote acts as a complete whole, with all the parts of the zygote interacting in an orchestrated fashion to generate the structures and relationships required for the zygote to continue developing towards its mature state. Everything the sperm and egg do prior to their fusion is uniquely ordered towards promoting the binding of these two cells. Everything the zygote does from the point of sperm-egg fusion onward is uniquely ordered to prevent further binding of sperm and to promote the preservation and development of the zygote itself. The zygote acts immediately and decisively to initiate a program of development that will, if uninterrupted by accident, disease, or external intervention, proceed seamlessly through formation of the definitive body, birth, childhood, adolescence, maturity, and aging, ending with death. This coordinated behavior is the very hallmark of an organism.
Based on a scientific description of fertilization, fusion of sperm and egg in the “moment of conception” generates a new human cell, the zygote, with composition and behavior distinct from that of either gamete. Moreover, this cell is not merely a unique human cell, but a cell with all the properties of a fully complete (albeit immature) human organism; it is “an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of organs separate in function but mutually dependent: a living being.
[T]he embryo comes into existence at sperm-egg fusion … a human organism is fully present from the beginning, controlling and directing all of the developmental events that occur throughout life. This view of the embryo is objective, based on the universally accepted scientific method of distinguishing different cell types from each other, and it is consistent with the factual evidence. It is entirely independent of any specific ethical, moral, political, or religious view of human life or of human embryos. Indeed, this definition does not directly address the central ethical questions surrounding the embryo: What value ought society to place on human life at the earliest stages of development? Does the human embryo possess the same right to life as do human beings at later developmental stages? A neutral examination of the factual evidence merely establishes the onset of a new human life at a scientifically well defined “moment of conception,” a conclusion that unequivocally indicates that human embryos from the zygote stage forward are indeed living individuals of the human species—human beings.”
Source:
bdfund.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wi_whitepaper_life_print.pdf
So, science tells us what the embryo is: an individual human organism, a human being, at the embryonic stage of life. It cannot tell us how the embryo ought to be treated, which is a moral (rather than scientific) question. But if it is true that human beings have intrinsic moral value, that we all have fundamental equality among all members of our species, irrespective of size, age, ability and condition of dependency, then we should not destroy embryonic fetal human beings for selfish no good reasons any more than we may kill a 10-year-old child because we don’t want them anymore, or it’s too grueling.
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And so the question remains still unanswered: How can one “kill” something” that cannot “die”?
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It’s a nonsensical question because the fetus can die. It’s development can be stopped by accident, disease, or external intervention, at which point it changes from a living organism to a dead organism.
Just like our development can be stopped through death during infancy, childhood, adolescence or adulthood. Anywhere along that line from start to finish we can die.
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“It’s a nonsensical question because the fetus can die.”
How, Roy, given our legal, medical and scientific definitions of “death” can a foetus (with no EGG activity) “die”? I remind you, it was you and Prayson using the word “killing,” and I am simply asking you to justify that words use in a rational and coherent manner which satisfies the legal, medical and scientific reality.
So far, not so good, I’m afraid to say.
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You are talking about when death can be established in a living person, one who is alive and changes to dead. That has no resemblance to a living human developing in the womb. Two totally different situations.
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Impressive nonsense there, Roy! “A living person… has no resemblance to a living human developing in the womb.” Wow! Do you even notice it (on a conscious level) when your brain performs these tricks of consummate senselessness?
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You know what I meant John. Comparing a living person who had brain activity and lost it through old age, disease or accident, to a developing fetus who has not yet developed a measurable EEG is the real trick of consummate senselessness. You epitomize one who promotes half-truths, myths, and lies, twisting them together in an attempt to show your perceived great knowledge, and then taking that perception of yourself you then spread fear and hatred against people who have different views of life and what life means. You spread your nonsense in multiple blogs not realizing how foolish you make yourself look.
As well, arguing against medical science, and know facts, kind of makes you a bit delusional, don’t you think? The biological facts of human embryogenesis and early development, and its conclusion is inescapable: From a purely biological perspective, scientists can identify the point at which a human life begins. The relevant studies are legion. The biological facts are uncontested. The method of analysis applied to the data is universally accepted.
Here are three more examples, out of hundreds I could reference…
“In sum, a human sperm and a human oocyte are products of gametogenesis – each has only 23 chromosomes. They each have only half of the required number of chromosomes for a human being. They cannot singly develop further into human beings. They produce only “gamete” proteins and enzymes. They do not direct their own growth and development. And they are not individuals, i.e., members of the human species. They are only parts – each one a part of a human being. On the other hand, a human being is the immediate product of fertilization. As such he/she is a single-cell embryonic zygote, an organism with 46 chromosomes, the number required of a member of the human species. This human being immediately produces specifically human proteins and enzymes, directs his/her own further growth and development as human, and is a new, genetically unique, newly existing, live human individual.”
Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy
all.org/abac/dni003.htm
“Human embryos are not . . . some other type of animal organism, like a dog or cat. Neither are they a part of an organism, like a heart, a kidney, or a skin cell. Nor again are they a disorganized aggregate, a mere clump of cells awaiting some magical transformation. Rather, a human embryo is a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stage of his or her natural development. Unless severely damaged, or denied or deprived of a suitable environment, a human being in the embryonic stage will, by directing its own integral organic functioning, develop himself or herself to the next more mature developmental stage, i.e., the fetal stage. The embryonic, fetal, child, and adolescent stages are stages in the development of a determinate and enduring entity—a human being—who comes into existence as a single-celled organism (the zygote) and develops, if all goes well, into adulthood many years later.”
Princeton professor and member of what was formerly the President’s Council on Bioethics, Robert P. George : princeton.edu/admission/whatsdistinctive/facultyprofiles/george/
amazon.com/EmbryoADefenseofHumanLifeHardcover/dp/0385522827/
“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed…. The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity.”
O’Rahilly, Ronan and Miller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29.
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“You epitomize one who promotes half-truths, myths, and lies, twisting them together in an attempt to show your perceived great knowledge, and then taking that perception of yourself you then spread fear and hatred against people who have different views of life and what life means.”
Says the person using deliberately provocative words such as “killing,” yet who is flatly incapable of defending such word-usage. Please don’t try and wiggle and squirm your way out of your failures here, Roy.
Now Roy, appeals to authority are always hilarious when they come from the right wing Christian. Let’s look at your authorities:
Dianne N. Irving: a philosopher (hardly qualified to speak on matters of biology), and is the representative of Catholic Medical Association. Wohoo.
Robert P. George: called America’s “most influential conservative Christian thinker.” Wow!
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“Here though you refer to your baby as a “creature” to lessen it’s worth, that a baby can be terminated with no remorse. Sad.”
Not in the slightest. I love all living creatures, and I use the term with utmost affection. It’s a little wriggly creature that has emerging human form but no consciousness.
“If you reread my original post I never objected to legalized abortion. In fact I feel it is better that it is legal than not. ” I’m relieved you can see this.
“Error? Ignorance? Really Violet? A grueling experience? Think about what your saying here. A women has sex in error not knowing this causes pregnancy and gets pregnant.” And here you reveal your arrogant card of doubting the complexity of situations that women find themselves in, and your ignorance of the real world. Pregnancy is more than gruelling, it’s a horrific experience for many women, and I say this as someone who has chosen it, Let’s not even mention giving birth. And seriously if you don’t understand the levels of ignorance about sex around the world you really need to open your eyes.
“I never took a Biblical stance in my post. No religion is needed.” The majority of anti-abortion campaigners are fuelled by religion. Because you have a tendency to imagine a fully formed being made by your god, and avoid looking at the science behind human development. However, I personally think abortion should be avoided at all costs and know the only way to do this is to improve sex education and access to low cost/free birth control.
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Roy, let’s make this perfectly clear: the organs of a brain dead person can be kept moving by use of machines. That doesn’t make the person “alive.” This is why when families agree to “switch off” granny’s machines, they are not then charged with murder. I do hope that’s clear.
Now, I’m afraid to say, Roy, but you have failed entirely to address the question. The legal, medical, and scientific definition of Death is cessation of brain activity. The UK and US definitions are quite clear. Perhaps you should read them again, particularly your own countries one: “An individual whose brain stem (lower brain) has died is not able to maintain vegetative functions of life, including respiration, circulation, and swallowing.” The Act then says the inability to do these things (that’s to say, when then brain stem is exhibiting no EEG activity) is the definition of “Dead.” I included the evolution of the Royal Colleges definitions of Death just to demonstrate how EEG activity (later including the higher functions connected with general consciousness) has been central in every articulation, and continues to be.
So, we know precisely what “Death” is, and the opposite of death is “Life,” is it not? Without death there is no life. The former begets the latter. The latter assigns meaning to the former. One delineates the other, and the definition of death is not in dispute.
It follows quite naturally therefore that the onset of what we define as “human life” is when foetal brain activity begins to exhibit regular and sustained wave patterns, and that occurs consistently around week 25 of pregnancy. Only after something can die can it be considered alive. Only after something is “On” can it be turned “Off.”
And so to ask the question one more time: How can something be “killed” if it cannot “die”?
Please Roy, concentrate and address the question in a rational and meaningful (adult) manner…
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Premise 1: A sperm will become a human being in the future.
Premise 2: It is illegal to kill a human being.
Conclusion: Therefore, it should be illegal to masturbate (or even to have balls as millions of sperms will inevitably perish there or outside them).
Premise 1: An egg cell will become a human being in the future.
Premise 2: It is illegal to kill a human being.
Conclusion: Therefore, it should be illegal to menstruate.
The trouble with the idea as presented by Roy is that something “will become a human being in the future”. The certain glint in the eyes of a man and a woman “will become a human being in the future”, if they do not use contraception, or if they do not have sex. Should it be illegal for them not to have sex, because there is this idea of a future event of something realizing into a human being? Ridiculous! Where do you draw the line and on what grounds?
I find it really disturbing, that the Christian right (worldwide) claims to have the authority of a supreme creator god entity behind this notion of abortion being wrong, when clearly the Bible has nothing to say about abortion!!! It has nothing to say about climate warming, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, terrorism, cloning, pollution, or any of the ethical, or moral social issues today, but people read into it all sorts of claims, they can not otherwise support. The only even possibly relevant guide to moral issues of our day the Bible explicitly suggests, is that Christians should sell all their property and give the money to the poor, but how many Christians have ever done that???
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Hi Raut! The Christian right also don’t seem to read their bibles. Not only is there no mention whatsoever of an anti-abortion stance in the bible, but as Violet began to point out, the Middle Eastern god the Christian worships is quite definitively pro-abortion, personally and passionately performing many terminations and ordering countless more. This is just some of the awkward things the Christian ignores:
In Hosea 9:11-16, the son of Beeri prays for his god to intervene in earthly affairs and wreak havoc on the unborn of an entire population. “Give them, 0 Lord: what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts… Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb.” To paraphrase, Hosea pleads that the people of Ephraim can no longer have children, to which the Christian god dutifully obeys and makes all their unborn children miscarry. Now, terminating a pregnancy unnaturally is unmistakably what we today call an abortion.
In Hosea 13:16 the Christian god is utterly diabolical as he dashes to “pieces” the infants of Samaria and orders “their pregnant women [to be] ripped open by swords.” This, self-evidently, describes mass abortions of such barbarity that it’s hard to even fathom.
In Numbers 5:11-21 a bizarre and abusive ritual is described which is to be performed by a priest on any woman suspected of adultery; a ritual which results in an abortion. In the text a potion is mixed and the accused woman is brought before the priest who says, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell.” As clear as day this is a definitive description of an induced abortion; an act where poison is forcibly given to ruin the foetus and rid a woman of another man’s child.
In Numbers 31:17 Moses commands “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every women that hath known man by lying with him.” In other words, kill all women that are or could be pregnant, which is plainly abortion for the foetus.
In 2 Kings 15:16 the Christian god again orders pregnant women to be “ripped open,” which is both abortionand homicide on a mass scale. “At that time Menahem destroyed the town of Tappuah and all the surrounding countryside as far as Tirzah, because its citizens refused to surrender. He killed the entire population and ripped open the pregnant women.”
In total there are in fact twenty-six separate instances where this Middle Eastern god performs abortions on demand, conducts infanticide (the intentional killing of newborns), and murders toddlers en masse; acts recounted from 1 Samuel 15:3 to Isaiah 13:15-18 where this god not only smashes babies to death but also orders the rape of their mothers. In a word the Christian god is a heinous baby-killing, foetus-destroying monster, and as it turns out his son is also no friend of the unborn. In the Gospel of the Egyptians Jesus not only demands total abstinence but preaches for the outright separation of the sexes, stating that “sorrow” and what he repeatedly calls “error” will remain with man for just “As long as women bear children.” The statement is quite explicit: don’t ever get pregnant, and if you do then abortion is better than birth.
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I was going to link to your post, but I didn’t want Roy to wince too much. 😉
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The Good Book is terribly embarrassing for them, that’s why they ignore it. The only part of scripture people like Roy can point to is “Don’t kill,” which brings us right back to the question i’m asking him: how can you “kill” something that cannot “die.”
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You’re aware that roughly a third (I’ve seen much larger estimates) of all conceptions are spontaneously aborted, either due to timing, uterine scarring, or genetic abnormalities?
Oh so many little persons out there. If there is a god, and these blastocysts are in fact people, then it is on his head that they are terminated, because he could have done a better job. The alternative is that personhood does not occur at conception. Pick one or the other, but either way, the argument for the immorality of abortion is not so simple as you would present.
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They love ignoring this point, all those souls with nowhere to go.
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I would get cranky that he ignored me, but that seems to be what he does.
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Ok, so you’re establishing that inflicted death in the womb is different from inflicted death outside of a womb. What then makes the former “wrong”, if they are not equatable? You’ve established that fertilization of an egg is the beginning of a unique organism, but you’ve not set down in what way squishing it is any different from using disinfectant while cleaning your toilet.
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I’m fascinated by your response, Violet. I found the article to be rather thought provoking and unemotional. I can’t see what your objection is, unless it’s that you simply do not believe that men should be pondering the issue.
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Well, if you compare it to your post on abortion, the difference is immense. You consider the circumstances that women face and while clearly taking the standard religious line against abortion acknowledge the complexity of the issues and the impact it has on women. I can’t bear to hear or read men pontificating on issues like this that don’t even affect them, without any reference to an understanding of the circumstances that lead to the decisions. Pondering is one thing, but making judgements in sheer and wilful ignorance is infuriating.
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I am with RSIM. I can only say STFU. Yes, yes, arguments, morality, no I don’t like the idea of abortion, but if a woman wants it I want her to have it, as quickly and easily as possible. The arguments only matter in Parliament. Life is too short to refute all the eejits who campaign against abortion. And see what they do when someone they love needs an abortion.
Halve military spending. Spend the money on almost anything else. How is that for a Pro Life campaign?
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I was confused by your acronyms but have worked out that the first one is Roughseas and the second one contains an expletive. The pro-life lobby is generally such a mess of conflicting ideologies, they really just need to change their label to anti-abortion so we can accept they tend to go hand in hand with military intervention policies and the death penalty, and, even more ridiculously, cutting benefits and healthcare to the families that are most often driven to have abortions for financial reasons …
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Sorry about the expletive, but (as, I think, with Roughseas) sometimes I do not want to engage. “It’s wicked!” they say. “It’s baby-murder!” “It’s unnatural, anyone can see a penis is not meant to go in an anus!” “You are a man pretending to be a woman!” And I go, like now, picking blackberries. They are so full of flavour!
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I understand, it’s tiring. Brambles are a much better option!
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