Pro-life or pro-choice?

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**poppa G**

So many people are pro-choice. I suppose a lot has shifted over the years.

**daedalus**

whembly wrote:

As a society we need to comes to grips with what's socially acceptable. That's why there's all this mental jujitsu about fetus, blob of cells, or any other word that is not "a baby" during these discussions. Because if you replace those words with "a baby", the outcome would, imo, would be different.

You think calling a blastula "a baby" is less mental jujitsu than calling it a "blob of cells"? It's a literal blob of cells. Probably has more in common with cancer at that point than humanity. Hell, you're not even a fetus until week 9 post fertilization.

**Peregrine**

Slarg232 wrote:
What about the kid? Maybe you don't have to see gak like "Lol, pregnant, 75 likes and I'll keep it!" on facebook too often, but yes, those people need to have less of a say about a baby being aborted.

So you use a ridiculous straw man (which probably is just a joke) as a reason to pass laws that have horrible consequences for a much larger group of people?

**Slarg232**

Peregrine wrote:
Slarg232 wrote:
What about the kid? Maybe you don't have to see gak like "Lol, pregnant, 75 likes and I'll keep it!" on facebook too often, but yes, those people need to have less of a say about a baby being aborted.

So you use a ridiculous straw man (which probably is just a joke) as a reason to pass laws that have horrible consequences for a much larger group of people?

Have you not seen some of the laws passed in this country?

**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

Da Boss wrote:
I'm not making a distinction. I'm just saying, I am okay with other people killing their babies in many situations. That's not to say it makes me happy or I would want it to happen to my kid, or the kid of someone I knew, or someone who was related to me. I have just accepted that if I really thought that it was so morally wrong, such a serious crime, I'd get up off my ass and do more about it than being judgemental at people. I don't feel empathy for unborn children for various irrelevant reasons, the same as I don't feel empathy for loads of the people dying in horrible ways around the world. You can make me feel empathy for them by telling me more about them and their lives, so I can relate to them, but unfortunately for babies, that doesn't really work with them. As soon as the baby is born it is more relatable I guess, so I am more outraged by people killing them at that stage.

Finally someone has been able to put in to words how I feel!

**Frazzled**

djones520 wrote:
Well the point your trying to make doesn't line up with the argument in the first place.

War is an entirely differant manner from abortion. Just as the death penalty is. I was just trying to point out it wasn't so black and white, but in reality, it's not even on the same color scale.

But just to put it in perspective, in regards to what your talking about. There are more abortions in the US alone, every year, then there was confirmed deaths for the entirety of the Iraq war. Nearly as many as 3 times.

Now that you mention it my viewpoint depends on the answer to these two questions.
Does it apply to post birth events? If I give you a list of persons can I have it applied retroactively. Ok, its not a short list...

**whembly**

daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

As a society we need to comes to grips with what's socially acceptable. That's why there's all this mental jujitsu about fetus, blob of cells, or any other word that is not "a baby" during these discussions. Because if you replace those words with "a baby", the outcome would, imo, would be different.

You think calling a blastula "a baby" is less mental jujitsu than calling it a "blob of cells"? It's a literal blob of cells. Probably has more in common with cancer at that point than humanity. Hell, you're not even a fetus until week 9 post fertilization.

No... because a true cancerous group of cells aren't called "a blob of cells"... it's cancer.

You'd never hear someone who has cancer says... "psssha... I have a "blob of cells that just doesn't know when to stop replicating".

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

**daedalus**

whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

**whembly**

daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

That is your opinion... not fact.

Hence why this never-ending argument.

**Slarg232**

daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

While I can agree with human/baby, we as scientific/philosophical beings can't even peg the "Soul" down in grown people, how do you know that a "Blob of Cells" doesn't have one

**daedalus**

Slarg232 wrote:
daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

While I can agree with human/baby, we as scientific/philosophical beings can't even peg the "Soul" down in grown people, how do you know that a "Blob of Cells" doesn't have one

I see your point, but does that mean that the default is that we assume it does exist, and it exists at that point?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

whembly wrote:

That is your opinion... not fact.

Hence why this never-ending argument.

I suppose. Out of curiosity, what qualities do you use to determine that it IS a human?

**Necroshea**

Pro choice. Always have been always will be. It's your body, you do what you want. I think imposing your mentality on someone else's body is all sorts of wrong.

**djones520**

What else is it? It's not a koala, or a chest-burster.

The "blob" that I saw on the ultrasound is the exact same thing as my 5 year old son.

**Peregrine**

whembly wrote:
That is your opinion... not fact.

Hence why this never-ending argument.

Having a never-ending argument doesn't mean that there are two legitimate sides to an issue. After all, there's a never-ending argument about whether evolution is true even though disputing it is on the same level as arguing that gravity doesn't exist (and proposing an "intelligent falling" theory).

**SilverMK2**

whembly wrote:
That is your opinion... not fact.

It most definitely is just a blob of cells for much of the early part of its development. Even when it starts developing a structure more akin to what might be recognised as human it is far from being "human". It is why in the majority of civilised countries, abortion is generally legal up to a certain point of development and not beyond that without some overriding reason.

**Peregrine**

djones520 wrote:
The "blob" that I saw on the ultrasound is the exact same thing as my 5 year old son.

Except that it's trivially easy to show that it wasn't. Do you favor cutting funding to all other medical research and putting all of our resources into preventing miscarriages? If you don't then you've just admitted that a fetus is not a child. The natural miscarriage rate (often happening before a woman knows she's pregnant) is higher than the abortion rate, and that many "children" dying every year would be an almost unimaginable crisis. So by supporting things like cancer research instead you're admitting that the fetus doesn't really count as a child.

**whembly**

daedalus wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

whembly wrote:

That is your opinion... not fact.

Hence why this never-ending argument.

I suppose. Out of curiosity, what qualities do you use to determine that it IS a human?

How can it NOT be human?

**CptJake**

daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

At what point would you assign it personhood and therefore have rights worth protecting? What would you base that on?

**whembly**

djones520 wrote:
What else is it? It's not a koala, or a chest-burster.

The "blob" that I saw on the ultrasound is the exact same thing as my 5 year old son.

Exactly!

**Frazzled**

daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

Define human.

**Ahtman**

curran12 wrote:
Ahtman wrote:
curran12 wrote:
Abortion should not be a replacement for responsibility or thinking. It should not be, for lack of a better term, a cosmetic or conveinence thing.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any evidence that abortion is being mainly used to replace responsibility or thinking? That there is a trend of it being mainly cosmetic or for convenience?

Even though someone brought the wiki to it, there's something more pertinent that I'd like to ask you. Just out of curiosity.

Where in the hell in my post did I say that I said "abortion is being mainly used to replace responsibility"?

Bolded. Right there, just few sentences away from you asking where it is. Unless you are using some lame attempt at a semantic sidestep and/or some facepalm worthy bit of sophistry, I can't see how your point isn't right there in bold.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:
Define human.

NEVER!

**Frazzled**

djones520 wrote:
What else is it? It's not a koala, or a chest-burster.

The "blob" that I saw on the ultrasound is the exact same thing as my 5 year old son.

probably made less of a mess though, although neither of them probably cleaned up their rooms.

**whembly**

SilverMK2 wrote:
whembly wrote:
That is your opinion... not fact.

It most definitely is just a blob of cells for much of the early part of its development.

Well.. from a scientifically... it is a blob of cells in that point in time... AND it's a baby. See? Easy peasy.

Even when it starts developing a structure more akin to what might be recognised as human it is far from being "human". It is why in the majority of civilised countries, abortion is generally legal up to a certain point of development and not beyond that without some overriding reason.

That's part of the never-ending debate isn't it?

**Frazzled**

SilverMK2 wrote:
whembly wrote:
That is your opinion... not fact.

It most definitely is just a blob of cells for much of the early part of its development. Even when it starts developing a structure more akin to what might be recognised as human it is far from being "human". It is why in the majority of civilised countries, abortion is generally legal up to a certain point of development and not beyond that without some overriding reason.

I like your use of "covilized countries" there.

Again, define human. This may take awhile.

**whembly**

Peregrine wrote:
djones520 wrote:
The "blob" that I saw on the ultrasound is the exact same thing as my 5 year old son.

Except that it's trivially easy to show that it wasn't.

Say what? o.O

Do you favor cutting funding to all other medical research and putting all of our resources into preventing miscarriages? If you don't then you've just admitted that a fetus is not a child. The natural miscarriage rate (often happening before a woman knows she's pregnant) is higher than the abortion rate, and that many "children" dying every year would be an almost unimaginable crisis. So by supporting things like cancer research instead you're admitting that the fetus doesn't really count as a child.

Strange logic here...

Do you even read what you just wrote there... why does "miscarriage" has to equate to "dead fetus"? It's a dead baby. Not because of the Mother's willful intent to cause the miscarriage... its due to nature's will.

**Peregrine**

whembly wrote:
Well.. from a scientifically... it is a blob of cells in that point in time... AND it's a baby. See? Easy peasy.

And, again, calling it a baby is a blatant attempt to evoke the image of an actual child and an emotional reaction. And that image is entirely inappropriate for something that is just a blob of cells with no functioning brain.

That's part of the never-ending debate isn't it?

There is no debate on the subject of human development. A fetus, at the time that most voluntary abortions happen, is not a person by any functioning definition of "person".

**timetowaste85**

Um...where is the "neither/both" option? Abortion shouldn't be a form of birth control: "whoops, I got pregnant from casual sex-off to vacuum it out" is disgusting. It's completely acceptable in the cases of rape, mother likely to die in childbirth, child likely to die in childbirth, or child likely to come out in such a state of complete deformity that a chance at anything considered a "life" to be all but impossible. My grandmother would have died giving birth to her fifth child, had she had it, and the doctor convinced her to have an abortion. I'm very glad she did. My ex girlfriend aborted my child without telling me, and I'll hate her until the day I die for it. See the difference? Both stories true, and it's not a black and white issue. Please fix it. Yes, the gf story is still a touchy and painful subject, as I should have a 3 year old right now.

**Ouze**

I see no problem with prohibiting abortion past the point where the fetus is viable outside of the womb- i.e. what our current laws already support.

I can't agree with calling a lump of cells the size of a grape "a baby" and granting it rights greater than the person within whom it resides. So, I guess I'm with the libertarians on this one, right?

**daedalus**

CptJake wrote:
daedalus wrote:
whembly wrote:

Just like you'd never hear of a pregnant woman says... "I'm with 'a blob of cells' ".

No, but are we calling it by a popular name, or are we calling it what it actually is? It is not a human, a baby, or a soul at that point. Claiming otherwise is simply untrue.

At what point would you assign it personhood and therefore have rights worth protecting? What would you base that on?

Frankly? I'm not entirely sure. While I think I understand the human developmental process better than your average person, I'd have to do further research into the specifics, as I'm no expert, and consider it for a while. I do know enough about it though to say that I do not feel there is anything more special or important about a developing blastula than there is an individual egg and sperm.

**Gentleman_Jellyfish**

timetowaste85 wrote:
or child likely to come out in such a state of complete deformity that a chance at anything considered a "life" to be all but impossible.

Uh oh, another debate!

What would you consider to be a life worth living?