Kilkrazy wrote:That is because the true issue they have is about control of women, not about abortion and sex.

wyomingfox wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:That is because the true issue they have is about control of women, not about abortion and sex.

Well, seeing as there is a rather large # of women leaders in the pro-life movement, I think it probably is about abortion and sex.

...

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Depends on how you define it as being used as Contraception.

If *no* precautions were taken at all, no johnnies, pill, cap, IUD, Morning After Pill, then I would personally frown upon an Abortion, as if they are that careless, have it adopted.

wyomingfox wrote:
Well again, an unfortunately high number of abortions are just that. Only 56% of abortions were performed by women who used concreceptives the month they got pregnant (unfortunaelty when you are talking millions of sexual encounters each year even small percentages of failure add up quickly :( ). The remaining 44% failed to use concraceptives the month they got pregnant.

Frazzled wrote:Thats a presumption MDG. Rational arguments can be made by parties on the other side for abortion, marriage, and a variety of issues. You're looking at it through a filter because often the strongest arguers on that side also have strong religious beliefs. I can see lots of sides to these arguments, and none of them have anything to do with religion.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Thats a presumption MDG. Rational arguments can be made by parties on the other side for abortion, marriage, and a variety of issues. You're looking at it through a filter because often the strongest arguers on that side also have strong religious beliefs. I can see lots of sides to these arguments, and none of them have anything to do with religion.

I think your confusing rational with logical. I can make a completely logical case for hating Jewish people, but that doesn't make it rational. Similarly, I can make a completely logical case for being against gay marriage, but that logic would have to rest on he idea that hetero couples were somehow deserving of additional privileges. something which is very much a modern (last 400-500 years) invention of the faithful. I love to play devil's advocate, but I also know a losing game when I see it.

Abortion is different. While I personally am not offended by it in the slightest, I can empathize with the desire to regulate it. That said, in the absence of an obviously rational choice (like gay marriage) it would seem that the best option will always be a permissive one.

Frazzled wrote:
Those are your words, not mine. People can make rational arguments on either side of most issues, without being bigots, nuts, cooks, or whatever you want to call them.

Frazzled wrote:Because thats not the only argument. Therefore its not bigotry. You're attempting to force a false dichotomy to win your argument.

Kilkrazy wrote:I'm not sure if this is relevant but it seems related.

Jehovah's Witnesses forbid the use of blood transfusions to save their children from death after accidents.

Is there a case for intervention?

Frazzled wrote:Several points, off the top of my head. Proviso here I’m not going to argue the merits, I don’t care, and I’ve previously posted government should be out of it altogether.

1) History. I
Historically marriage was a property, inheritance, and child procreation. Property and inheritance are not issues, but children are. Studies have shown that a stable family unit of father/mother -with all other factors being equal-is better for children.

Frazzled wrote:
2) History II
Historically marriage was indeed between the sexes. While there were relationships, marriage itself has been generally reserved for that.

Frazzled wrote:
3) Slippery slope.
Been discussed.

Frazzled wrote:
4) Marriage is now effectively a religious title. Legislation is such that the rights and duties historically reserved for married may be obtained elsewhere.

Frazzled wrote:
None of these are from a bigot, or a religious context.

wyomingfox wrote:

dogma wrote:

wyomingfox wrote:
Your point that Polygammy primarily involved relationships with women under the age of consent.

The modern age of consent dude. Marriage at the age of 12 would still be considered predatory today.

And a large # of monogomous relationships that occurred in those days would have been viewed the same way today. Differnet time, differnet standards. Oh and marriage at the age of 12 IS considered predatory and is illegal. And again, underage marriage is prohibitted by a separate law.

The earliest Western documents (in the form of literary works, art objects, as well as mythographic materials) concerning same-sex relationships are derived from ancient Greece. They depict a world in which relationships with women and relationships with youths were the essential foundation of a normal man's love life. Same-sex relationships were a social institution variously constructed over time and from one city to another. The formal practice, an erotic yet often restrained relationship between a free adult male and a free [non-slave] adolescent, was valued for its pedagogic benefits and as a means of population control, though occasionally blamed for causing disorder. Plato praised its benefits in his early writings,[38] but in his late works proposed its prohibition.[39]

In Ancient Rome the situation was reversed. Though the young male body remained a focus of male sexual attention, free boys were off limits as sexual partners.

Notwithstanding these regulations, taxes on brothels of boys [slaves] available for homosexual sex continued to be collected until the end of the reign of Anastasius I in 518.

Wyomingfox wrote: As for brain wave activity, it occurs much earlier

Margaret Sykes wrote:[The Bergstroms] found "electrical activity" in fetal brainstem cells from 10 weeks of pregnancy (56 days after fertilization) on, but that doesn't mean much. An EEG involves measuring varying electrical potentials across a dipole, or separated positive and negative charges. Any living cell has an electrical potential across its membrane, and any living structure is a dipole, which explains why people have been able to put electrodes on plants, hook them up to EEG machines, and get "evidence" that plants have feelings. But this has nothing to do with "brain waves," which are a nontechnical term for a particular kind of varying potentials produced by certain brain structures that don't even exist in an embryo and associated with consciousness and dreaming as well as the regulation of bodily functions.

The Bergstroms did not find electrical activity of a kind that had anything to do with "brain function" until 84 days (12 weeks) of gestation, or 70 days after conception. The activity then recorded was not in any way similar to what is seen on a normal EEG, which includes what people call "brain waves." Rather, the Bergstroms stimulated the fetal brain stem and were able to record random bursts of electrical activity which looked exactly like the bursts they got from the fetal leg muscles when they were stimulated.

Margaret Sykes wrote: When people, including physicians, talk about "brain waves" and "brain activity" they are referring to organized activity in the cortex. While no embryo or fetus has ever been found to have "brain waves," extensive EEG studies have been done on premature babies. A very good summary of their findings can be found in Pain and its effects in the human neonate and fetus," a review article (often cited by "pro-lifers" writing about fetal pain, but not about brain development) by K.J.S. Anand, a leading researcher on pain in newborns, and P.R. Hickey, published in NEJM:

Functional maturity of the cerebral cortex is suggested by fetal and neonatal electroencephalographic patterns...First, intermittent electroencephalograpic bursts in both cerebral hemispheres are first seen at 20 weeks gestation; they become sustained at 22 weeks and bilaterally synchronous at 26 to 27 weeks.

There are reasons, based on the physics of the EEG, why this has to be so. Remember, an EEG involves measuring varying electrical potential across a dipole, or separated charges. To get scalp or surface potentials from the cortex requires three things: neurons, dendrites, and axons, with synapses between them. Since these requirements are not present in the human cortex before 20-24 weeks of gestation, it is not possible to record "brain waves" prior to 20-24 weeks. Period. End of story. Scientists do not attempt to find electrocortical activity in embryos and fetuses because they know more about the physical structure of the developing human brain than they did in 1963.

Wyomingfox wrote: Well, seeing as there is a rather large # of women leaders in the pro-life movement, I think it probably is about abortion and sex.

wyomingfox wrote:
Moreover, if you had a problem with a supposed propensity (or majority) for Polygamists to have relationships with adolescent girls, then you should be similarily opposed to the common greek expression of homosexual love that was between a man and an adolescent (often refered to as "boy" love).

Mannahnin wrote:

Wyomingfox wrote: As for brain wave activity, it occurs much earlier

Can you quote your source for this? Sometimes people make claims of this based on taking remarks out of context from Dr. Hannibal Hamlin's 1964 speech "Life or Death by EEG.", but he drew his data from a Japanese study from 1951, and their results have not been replicated; more modern studies have found far different results. Bergstrom's "Development of EEG and unit electrical activity of the brain during ontogeny", for example, and Anand & Hickey’s “Pain and its effects in the human neonate and fetus”.

ABSTRACT

The human brainstem is fashioned around the 7th week of gestation and matures in a caudal to rostral arc thereby forming the medulla, pons, and midbrain. The medulla mediates arousal, breathing, heart rate, and gross movement of the body and head, and medullary functions appear prior to those of the pons which precede those of the midbrain. Hence, by the 9th gestational week the fetus will display spontaneous movements, one week later takes its first breath, and by the 25th week demonstrates stimulus-induced heart rate accelerations. As the pons, which is later to mature, mediates arousal, body movements, and vestibular and vibroacoustic perception, from around the 20th to 27th weeks the fetus responds with arousal and body movements to vibroacoustic and loud sounds delivered to the maternal abdomen. The midbrain inferior-auditory followed by the superior-visual colliculi is the last to mature, and in conjunction with the lower brainstem makes fine auditory discriminations, and reacts to sound with fetal heart rate (FHR) accelerations, head turning, and eye movements--around the 36th week. When aroused the fetus also reacts with reflexive movements, head turning, FHR accelerations, and may fall asleep and display rapid eye movements. Thus fetal-cognitive motor activity, including auditory discrimination, orienting, the wake-sleep cycle, FHRs, and defensive reactions, appear to be under the reflexive control of the brainstem which also appears capable of learning-related activity.

FETAL BRAIN-BEHAVIOR AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

It is now well established that the human fetus is capable of some degree of behavioral complexity. In fact, as early as the 9th week of gestation the fetus is able to spontaneously move the extremities, head, and trunk (de Vries, Visser, & Prechtl, 1985). It has also been suggested that the near term fetus may be endowed with some degree of cognitive capability (e.g., Hepper & Shahidullah, 1994; Kisilevsky, Fearson & Muir, 1998). Cognition has been inferred based on alterations in fetal heart rate (FHR) and habituation to airborne sound (Kisilevsky & Muir, 1991), response-declines to vibroacoustic stimuli (Kisilevsky et al., 1998; Kuhlman, Burns, Depp, & Sabagha, 1988), and what appears to be neonatal preferences for the maternal voice as well as melodies and stories presented up to six weeks prior to birth (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; DeCasper & Spence, 1986; DeCasper, Lecanuet, Busnel, Granier-Deferre & Maugeais, 1994; Lecanuet, Granier-Deferre, & Busnel, 1989).

As will be detailed below, the behavior of the fetus and newborn is likely a reflection of reflexive brainstem activities which are produced in the absence of forebrain-mediated affective or cognitive processing, i.e. thinking, reasoning, understanding, or true emotionality (Joseph, 1996a, 1999; Levene, 1993; Sroufe, 1996). It is the much slower to develop forebrain which generates higher order cognitive activity and purposeful behaviors, and which is responsible for the expression and experience of true emotions including pleasure, rage, fear and joy and the desire for social-emotional contact (Joseph, 1992, 1996ab, 1999; MacLean, 1990).

At birth and for the ensuing weeks, the forebrain is so immature that its influences are limited to signaling distress in reaction to hunger or thirst; a function of the immature hypothalamus (Joseph, 1982, 1992, 1999) in conjunction with the midbrain periaqueductal gray (e.g. Larson, Yajima, & Ko, 1994; Zhang, Davis, Bandler, & Carrive, 1994). Although various limbic nuclei become functionally mature over the course of the first several postnatal months and years (Benes, 1994; Joseph, 1992, 1999), the neocortex and lobes of the brain take well over seven, ten, and even thirty years to fully develop and myelinate (Blinkov & Glezer, 1968; Conel, 1939, 1941; Flechsig, 1901; Huttenlocher, 1990; Yakovlev & Lecours, 1967).

It is rather obvious that the neonate is able to scream and cry and can even slightly lift the corners of the mouth as if smiling. However, these do not appear to be true emotions (Sroufe, 1996; however, see Izard, 1991). In fact, smiling, as well as screaming and crying can be produced from brainstem stimulation even with complete forebrain transection or destruction (Larson et al., 1994; Zhang et al., 1994; reviewed in Joseph, 1996a). Hence, neonatal and premature infant "smiling" or distress reactions to noxious stimulation (e.g. heel lance) are also likely brainstem mediated, particularly in that they may be triggered in the absence of any obvious stimulus source and following forebrain destruction or lack of development (anencephaly). However, as brainstem maturation continues in a caudal-rostral arc (Debakan, 1970; Langworthy, 1937), at term and over the following weeks and months, the immature hypothalamus (which sits atop the midbrain), and thus the forebrain, increasingly contributes to and gains control over these behaviors (Joseph, 1992, 1999).

The progression in behavioral complexity that begins with spontaneous fetal movements and which culminates with presumed preferences for the sound of mother's voice, also appear to reflect maturational events taking place in the brainstem, followed by forebrain structures. Indeed, the brainstem is first fashioned around the 33rd day of gestation (Bayer, 1995; Marin-Padilla, 1988; Sidman & Rakic, 1982) and nearly completes its cycle of development and myelination around the 7th gestational month (Gilles, Leviton, & Dooling, 1983; Langworthy, 1937; Yakovlev & Lecours, 1967). However, in contrast to the forebrain, the brainstem is incapable of cognition such as reasoning, comprehension, or thought (Joseph, 1996c), but instead reflexively reacts to a variety of stimuli in an exceedingly complex, albeit stereotyped fashion (Blessing, 1997; Cohen, Rossignol & Gillner, 1988; Cowie, Smith, & Robinson,1994; Steriade & McCarley, 1990).

dogma wrote:

wyomingfox wrote:
Well again, an unfortunately high number of abortions are just that. Only 56% of abortions were performed by women who used concreceptives the month they got pregnant (unfortunaelty when you are talking millions of sexual encounters each year even small percentages of failure add up quickly :( ). The remaining 44% failed to use concraceptives the month they got pregnant.

Of course they very likely could not afford, or had no access to, contraceptives.

"Forty-six percent of women had not used a contraceptive method in the month they conceived, mainly because of perceived low risk of pregnancy and concerns about contraception (cited by 33% and 32% of nonusers, respectively)."

wyomingfox wrote:

dogma wrote:

wyomingfox wrote:
Well again, an unfortunately high number of abortions are just that. Only 56% of abortions were performed by women who used concreceptives the month they got pregnant (unfortunaelty when you are talking millions of sexual encounters each year even small percentages of failure add up quickly :( ). The remaining 44% failed to use concraceptives the month they got pregnant.

Of course they very likely could not afford, or had no access to, contraceptives.

Well, that is one theory :S. The report actually concluded that it had more to do with lack of knowledge than availability [on a side note, condoms are pretty available, go into just about any gas station's bathroom and pay $0.25]:

"Forty-six percent of women had not used a contraceptive method in the month they conceived, mainly because of perceived low risk of pregnancy and concerns about contraception (cited by 33% and 32% of nonusers, respectively)."

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3429402.html

Contraceptive Nonusers [NOTE THE LAST PARAGRAPH]
The proportion of women having abortions who had not been using a contraceptive when they became pregnant varied across social and demographic subgroups from 37% to 54% (Table 2). Bivariate analyses reveal that adolescents and women aged 20-24 were significantly more likely than women aged 30 or older to be nonusers (47-50% vs. 44%). Decreases in income and education are associated with increased contraceptive nonuse: Women with family incomes below 300% of the federal poverty level were more likely than women with higher incomes not to be using a method of birth control in the month they became pregnant (45-52% vs. 40%), and women with less than a college degree were significantly more likely than college graduates to be nonusers (41-54% vs. 37%). Blacks, Hispanics and women of other races and ethnicities were more likely than whites to be nonusers (50-52% vs. 39%). Union status was barely associated with nonuse of contraception. Women who were the most likely to be nonusers were also the most likely never to have used a contraceptive method. For example, adolescents were more likely than women aged 30 or older to have never practiced contraception (12-19% vs. 7%).

We used logistic regression to determine if the associations between contraceptive nonuse and women's characteristics were independent of the impact of other characteristics (Table 2). In these analyses, adolescents were as likely as women aged 30 or older to have been using no method when they became pregnant; differences in nonuse by poverty status also disappeared.

malfred wrote:Anecdotally, withdrawal should work as a contraceptive 95% of the time. However, weak willed
males ultimately fail and make the percentage somewhere around 70%.

wyomingfox wrote:
We used logistic regression to determine if the associations between contraceptive nonuse and women's characteristics were independent of the impact of other characteristics (Table 2). In these analyses, adolescents were as likely as women aged 30 or older to have been using no method when they became pregnant; differences in nonuse by poverty status also disappeared.