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But you just said that arguing based on potential or basing the argument on the future of the fetus is fallicios. Therefor you have to accept that it is also not unethical for the mother to drink during pregnancy.

 whembly wrote:
Seb... where are you getting the 100K and 50k figures?

I thought it was waaaaaaaaaay more than that?

The count in Florida is 4,169,044 votes to 4,117,106.

The count in Ohio is 2,697,308 votes to 2,593,789.

The count in Virginia is 1,905,528 votes to 1,789,618.

 Peregrine wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:
If a man wants a vasectomy... he needs approval from his spouse.

Err, what? Do you have a source for that?

First of all... that happened to me. I needed my wife's (now ex) permission... this is even after I sired 2 boyz.

Secondly... it's all over the 'net. And it has to do with men secretly doing this and the wife sued the Dr...

 d-usa wrote:
I think Megyn Kelly asked Karl Rove the best question of the night:

"so is this math you as a republican do to make yourself feel better or is it real?"

That's a beautiful thing.

Do you think they might start to get it, now?

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Seb... where are you getting the 100K and 50k figures?

I thought it was waaaaaaaaaay more than that?

The count in Florida is 4,169,044 votes to 4,117,106.

The count in Ohio is 2,697,308 votes to 2,593,789.

The count in Virginia is 1,905,528 votes to 1,789,618.

Thanks...

Damn... that was close.

 youbedead wrote:
But you just said that arguing based on potential or basing the argument on the future of the fetus is fallicios. Therefor you have to accept that it is also not unethical for the mother to drink during pregnancy.

Except that's not true at all.

In the case of abortion the question is whether the fetus right now has rights based on its potential.

In the case of drinking or smoking the question is whether the entity that will suffer harm from the action has rights. It has nothing to do with potential, it's just a case of delayed harm, like how it would be wrong for me to poison you with a really slow acting poison that won't harm you until years from now.

The two ethical questions are entirely different, and the answer to one has nothing at all to do with the answer to the other.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure I can. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly states that the fetus has none of the characteristics that define any non-religious concept of "human", therefore it has no moral value. If your secular moral system allows you to squish a cockroach it can have no possible objection to abortion.

No, dude, just no.

There is no point at which we can say with any degree of objective satisfaction that something was not a human, and now is. Instead we have a series of different concepts, all of which are arbitrary to some extent or another. I mean, a new born baby can't focus on the world around it, can't form independant thoughts, and so doesn't really qualify for most intelligence measures of what makes a human, and yet people who'd claim it was okay for a mother to kill her three month old child are pretty thin on the ground.

People just have to take a step back, and admit the complexity of this issue, instead of just hammering away and declaring everyone else wrong.

That includes the 'life begins at conception' people, who have a religious belief that's entirely an invention of the late 70s/early 80s, by the way.


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 whembly wrote:
Or try this... and it's true, I've experienced this...

If a woman wants to abort... that's her choice.

If a man wants a vasectomy... he needs approval from his spouse.

Strange world eh?

EDIT - wow that's some crazy bs.

Still, that shows how objectionable it is to have medical procedures dependant on the approval of anyone other than the person being operated on, more than anything else.

Its like the old Dakka legend of the man in the backyard shaking a stick at invisible monsters. Why does he do it? Maybe he is trying to save make believe souls.

 whembly wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:
If a man wants a vasectomy... he needs approval from his spouse.

Err, what? Do you have a source for that?

First of all... that happened to me. I needed my wife's (now ex) permission... this is even after I sired 2 boyz.

Secondly... it's all over the 'net. And it has to do with men secretly doing this and the wife sued the Dr...

That's just bizarre. Was this actually a law requiring permission, or was it a case of a doctor who imposed their personal beliefs on you?

(And men suing the doctor doesn't necessarily mean anything. You can sue over anything you want. For example, I could sue you for a billion dollars for having an annoying avatar, but that doesn't mean that having the avatar is illegal.)

d-usa wrote:(being pro-life myself while wanting a pro-choice system)

To me this is the only rational position to have if you are prolife.

 sebster wrote:
There is no point at which we can say with any degree of objective satisfaction that something was not a human, and now is. Instead we have a series of different concepts, all of which are arbitrary to some extent or another. I mean, a new born baby can't focus on the world around it, can't form independant thoughts, and so doesn't really qualify for most intelligence measures of what makes a human, and yet people who'd claim it was okay for a mother to kill her three month old child are pretty thin on the ground.

Sure, I admit that there's a gray area, however that gray area isn't relevant to the abortion debate. Virtually all abortions are done before the fetus develops to a point where there's any ambiguity, and almost all of the ones done later are done because of medical reasons like "the fetus is going to die as soon as it is born, and might kill the mother in the process".

The only way to push that gray area back far enough to cover the vast majority of abortions is to invoke a religious concept of a soul that appears before the physical development of the brain happens.

 sebster wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure I can. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly states that the fetus has none of the characteristics that define any non-religious concept of "human", therefore it has no moral value. If your secular moral system allows you to squish a cockroach it can have no possible objection to abortion.

No, dude, just no.

There is no point at which we can say with any degree of objective satisfaction that something was not a human, and now is. Instead we have a series of different concepts, all of which are arbitrary to some extent or another. I mean, a new born baby can't focus on the world around it, can't form independant thoughts, and so doesn't really qualify for most intelligence measures of what makes a human, and yet people who'd claim it was okay for a mother to kill her three month old child are pretty thin on the ground.

People just have to take a step back, and admit the complexity of this issue, instead of just hammering away and declaring everyone else wrong.

That includes the 'life begins at conception' people, who have a religious belief that's entirely an invention of the late 70s/early 80s, by the way.

You sir... are awesome! Gotta be one of the best explanation of that issue. :clapping:

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 whembly wrote:
Or try this... and it's true, I've experienced this...

If a woman wants to abort... that's her choice.

If a man wants a vasectomy... he needs approval from his spouse.

Strange world eh?

What? Where in the world does a man need spousal approval for a medical procedure?

 whembly wrote:
Yup... happened to me and numerous guys. Urologist are afraid of being sued by an angry wife. My ex-wife had to sign a waiver saying it's okay for a doc to clip some tubings.

So that's not a law then, just the personal opinion of the doctor. That's entirely different from the debate over abortion, which is about legal bans.

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Yup... happened to me and numerous guys. Urologist are afraid of being sued by an angry wife. My ex-wife had to sign a waiver saying it's okay for a doc to clip some tubings.

So that's not a law then, just the personal opinion of the doctor. That's entirely different from the debate over abortion, which is about legal bans.

No... it's not about legal ban...

It's about the age old question "Do I have the right to my own body?".

That falls into:
-abortion
-drug use (weed)
-tattoo
-and yes, vasectomy

 Peregrine wrote:

 sebster wrote:
There is no point at which we can say with any degree of objective satisfaction that something was not a human, and now is. Instead we have a series of different concepts, all of which are arbitrary to some extent or another. I mean, a new born baby can't focus on the world around it, can't form independant thoughts, and so doesn't really qualify for most intelligence measures of what makes a human, and yet people who'd claim it was okay for a mother to kill her three month old child are pretty thin on the ground.

Sure, I admit that there's a gray area, however that gray area isn't relevant to the abortion debate. Virtually all abortions are done before the fetus develops to a point where there's any ambiguity, and almost all of the ones done later are done because of medical reasons like "the fetus is going to die as soon as it is born, and might kill the mother in the process".

The only way to push that gray area back far enough to cover the vast majority of abortions is to invoke a religious concept of a soul that appears before the physical development of the brain happens.

So why not allow the killing of a newborn

 whembly wrote:
It's about the age old question "Do I have the right to my own body?".

No it isn't. The law has clearly answered that yes, you have the right to your own body in this case. That's entirely separate from a particular doctor deciding to be a and refuse to give you something you are legally permitted to have. You're free to find another doctor, do it yourself, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 youbedead wrote:
So why not allow the killing of a newborn

Because that's far enough into the gray area that we can't confidently say that it isn't murder.

 youbedead wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 sebster wrote:
There is no point at which we can say with any degree of objective satisfaction that something was not a human, and now is. Instead we have a series of different concepts, all of which are arbitrary to some extent or another. I mean, a new born baby can't focus on the world around it, can't form independant thoughts, and so doesn't really qualify for most intelligence measures of what makes a human, and yet people who'd claim it was okay for a mother to kill her three month old child are pretty thin on the ground.

Sure, I admit that there's a gray area, however that gray area isn't relevant to the abortion debate. Virtually all abortions are done before the fetus develops to a point where there's any ambiguity, and almost all of the ones done later are done because of medical reasons like "the fetus is going to die as soon as it is born, and might kill the mother in the process".

The only way to push that gray area back far enough to cover the vast majority of abortions is to invoke a religious concept of a soul that appears before the physical development of the brain happens.

So why not allow the killing of a newborn

Okay... my head is starting to hurt... but what?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
It's about the age old question "Do I have the right to my own body?".

No it isn't. The law has clearly answered that yes, you have the right to your own body in this case. That's entirely separate from a particular doctor deciding to be a and refuse to give you something you are legally permitted to have. You're free to find another doctor, do it yourself, etc.

You missing my point...

Lemme try again...

If the doctor needs a waiver from a spouse in order for a hubby to get snipped, so that it protects the Doc from future litigation...

Why couldn't a hubby, sue the doctor who aborted his baby w/o his knowledge?

 whembly wrote:
Okay... my head is starting to hurt... but what?

It's a ridiculous attempt to try to argue that my justification for abortion also justifies killing the newborn, so therefore abortion should be banned. Fortunately it's a stupid argument.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
If the doctor needs a waiver from a spouse in order for a hubby to get snipped, so that it protects the Doc from future litigation...

The doctor doesn't need a waiver, the individual doctor wants a waiver. Seriously, it's not that hard to understand the difference between what the law requires and what an individual person demands in addition to what the law requires.

Why couldn't a hubby, sue the doctor who aborted his baby w/o his knowledge?

They can, just like I can sue you for using the word "sue" in a forum post. However they shouldn't have any luck with that lawsuit, just like no sensible court would ever do anything but laugh at me and throw out my lawsuit.

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Okay... my head is starting to hurt... but what?

It's a ridiculous attempt to try to argue that my justification for abortion also justifies killing the newborn, so therefore abortion should be banned. Fortunately it's a stupid argument.

Do you not know how to read. No were have I said I believe abortion should be banned. My question is what makes a human life more valuable then an animal life, as what separates us from the animals often doesn't fully develop until many months after birth. If murder is defined as killing a human then we must determine what makes a human

 whembly wrote:
Thanks...

Damn... that was close.

Well, as Peregrine rightly corrected me, that still wouldn't have won the election. Romney still needed the next state in the pecking order to fall his way - Colorado, and that went 1,238,490 to 1,125,391, which was a safer margin of victory.

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Okay... my head is starting to hurt... but what?

It's a ridiculous attempt to try to argue that my justification for abortion also justifies killing the newborn, so therefore abortion should be banned. Fortunately it's a stupid argument.

I thought we were somehow talking about what does the GOP need to do regarding the abortion stance...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
If the doctor needs a waiver from a spouse in order for a hubby to get snipped, so that it protects the Doc from future litigation...

The doctor doesn't need a waiver, the individual doctor wants a waiver. Seriously, it's not that hard to understand the difference between what the law requires and what an individual person demands in addition to what the law requires.

Next time, go ask your PCP or Urologist... while there's no laws on the books, if you're a young married man, then the doctor in his view would require it. I wouldn't be surprised the Doctor's Malpractice insurance would compel this requirement....

Why couldn't a hubby, sue the doctor who aborted his baby w/o his knowledge?

They can, just like I can sue you for using the word "sue" in a forum post. However they shouldn't have any luck with that lawsuit, just like no sensible court would ever do anything but laugh at me and throw out my lawsuit.

 youbedead wrote:
Do you not know how to read. No were have I said I believe abortion should be banned. My question is what makes a human life more valuable then an animal life, as what separates us from the animals often doesn't fully develop until many months after birth. If murder is defined as killing a human then we must determine what makes a human

Except, once again, the gray area doesn't matter. Abortion is so far on the side of "not a human being with human rights" that any remotely plausible definition of "human" will allow it.

Here's an analogy for you: killing is a subject with massive gray areas. Is killing in self defense justified, and under what circumstances? What relative degrees of punishment should go to killing deliberately vs. killing through negligence vs. killing by complete accident? Is there such a thing as a "just war", or is all killing in war wrong? If some killing in war is wrong but not other killing, does the responsibility for the killing fall on the individual soldier who did it, or the chain of command that ordered it? Etc.

However, none of these things matter if the question is whether it's wrong to pick a random stranger and shoot them in the head just for the fun of killing someone. That act of murder is so far from any of the gray areas that no matter what answers you give to the difficult questions you're still going to say it's wrong. Abortion is exactly the same.

 youbedead wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Okay... my head is starting to hurt... but what?

It's a ridiculous attempt to try to argue that my justification for abortion also justifies killing the newborn, so therefore abortion should be banned. Fortunately it's a stupid argument.

Do you not know how to read. No were have I said I believe abortion should be banned. My question is what makes a human life more valuable then an animal life, as what separates us from the animals often doesn't fully develop until many months after birth. If murder is defined as killing a human then we must determine what makes a human

Okay... can we please not get drag into this discussion right now... we're never going to change people's mind on this.

If you want to, lets discuss should the GOP change it's abortion plank to something more moderate? Like what D-USA said earlier? Being Pro-life in a Pro-Choice society... how could the GOP articulate that?

I think this is potentially thread derailement, even tho it might illustrate how a pro-life party might create itself a new platform while ditching the religious roots. So I'll limit myself to this post. If you really want to argue this, and I'd love to as long as it remains polite, maybe we could move this to another thread?

 Peregrine wrote:


Except any "human dignity" that can apply to a fetus with no functioning nervous system, capacity to feel pain, etc, can apply equally well to cancer cells and nobody would ever argue that you shouldn't treat cancer by removing the problem cells.

Not at all, you could very well argue that having a future capacity to choose the shape of your life is part of this dignity. Freedom is a fundamental right, after all.

The only way to oppose abortion is to bring in some kind of characteristic that the fetus has that other blobs of meat don't have, and that requires religion.

A conscious future. A future ability to experiment. You argue as if morality ended at the immediate state of things, which it does not. Almost all moral systems will evaluate consequences according to what's foreseable from a point of view, either that of the evaluator or that of the agent. It would be a rather (extremely) conceited point of view that didn't see that killing a fetus steals something of a future being.

So, while there may be "arguments" in the sense that people compose grammatically correct sentences expressing their disagreement, those arguments are laughably bad and we should not pay any attention to them.

I disagree and would appreciate that you didn't ridiculize the moral position I take. There's enough derp over this subject (from both sides) that I think everyone should take care of not going in absolute statement regarding the value of those positions. It will only make the debate more healthy.

Sure I can. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly states that the fetus has none of the characteristics that define any non-religious concept of "human", therefore it has no moral value. If your secular moral system allows you to squish a cockroach it can have no possible objection to abortion.

Your argument can be broken up in this way :

1) Human life is defined by x, y, z (either a legal, moral or semantical premise, your choice)
2) Fetus doesn't have x, y, z (scientific premise)
3) Human life is the only type of life we recognize has having value (moral value judgement)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Fetus life doesn't have any moral value (moral conclusion)

You can arrange your argument in a few other ways, but there always will be a moral value judgement in it if you want to arrive to a moral conclusion. Such a moral value judgement doesn't have a scientific basis in itself. Therefore, while your scientific premise might be correct (I would posit that there are essential differences between cancer cells and human cells, regarding the actions of dna and the lack of actions on dna on an already used genetic material), one can simply reject your moral value judgement and replace it by another, for example, in my case, 3) the process of development of a potential human life is the only type of life we recognize has having an absolute value.

 whembly wrote:
I thought we were somehow talking about what does the GOP need to do regarding the abortion stance...

That was what started it, I pointed out that there's no viable secular argument against abortion, so any anti-abortion platform must include the religious element and carries the risk that another extremist idiot will say something stupid about "legitimate rape" or whatever and cost the republicans a seat in congress. Therefore any successful attempt to purge the republican party of the liability of those idiots is going to require removing the entire anti-abortion position from the republican party platform.

The rest is a couple people trying to come up with a secular argument against abortion and failing hilariously.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure, I admit that there's a gray area, however that gray area isn't relevant to the abortion debate. Virtually all abortions are done before the fetus develops to a point where there's any ambiguity, and almost all of the ones done later are done because of medical reasons like "the fetus is going to die as soon as it is born, and might kill the mother in the process".

The only way to push that gray area back far enough to cover the vast majority of abortions is to invoke a religious concept of a soul that appears before the physical development of the brain happens.

No, the whole thing is a grey area, because human life is something that develops over an extended period of time, and any point you pick is arbitrary. It is true to say at any stage that more development, more advancement in complexity and thought patterns is more special, more deserving of life... but it is impossible to draw a line in the sand at any point and say 'this is now clearly life while what was there before clearly wasn't'.

Now, personally I don't agree with life beginning at conception, and more than anything else think it is a particularly weak religious argument, but it remains an arbitrary point just like any other. A person believing that is the point that life begins at isn't wrong. They are very simplistic, but no more simplistic than the person who says life doesn't begin there.

 whembly wrote:
If you want to, lets discuss should the GOP change it's abortion plank to something more moderate? Like what D-USA said earlier? Being Pro-life in a Pro-Choice society... how could the GOP articulate that?

It can't, not without removing the Liars for Jesus element of the party and throwing away those automatic votes. The only way to be "pro-life in a pro-choice society" is to say "I support allowing abortion, but will never choose it for myself", which is exactly what the pro-choice side wants. The hypothetical republican platform would be exactly identical to the democrats, and to all but the absolute most extreme (and irrelevant) zealots of the pro-choice movement.

youbedead wrote: If murder is defined as killing a human then we must determine what makes a human

You already have. I believe in the US it's something along the lines of "a person is a human being who was born alive", or something to that extent.

 sebster wrote:
No, the whole thing is a grey area, because human life is something that develops over an extended period of time, and any point you pick is arbitrary. It is true to say at any stage that more development, more advancement in complexity and thought patterns is more special, more deserving of life... but it is impossible to draw a line in the sand at any point and say 'this is now clearly life while what was there before clearly wasn't'.

See previous post with the analogy to murder. It doesn't matter if you can't draw a non-arbitrary line as long as you can be absolutely certain that, wherever the line is eventually drawn, it falls outside the period where the vast majority of abortion occurs. And that's exactly the situation we're in: we can't be sure exactly when a "person" begins to exist, but we know with absolute certainty that the point (or period of time) can not happen before the brain develops and begins to operate.

Unless of course you want to invoke some kind of religious element, like a soul, in which case we're right back to what I said originally: the entire anti-abortion argument is a religious one, and the republican party can't maintain an anti-abortion position without suffering from the effects of the anti-abortion extremists of the religious right.

 whembly wrote:
I thought we were somehow talking about what does the GOP need to do regarding the abortion stance...

I think the answer there is simple - it doesn't have to do much. It's a vote winner.

It only becomes a costly issue when nutters on the fringes start saying stuff the DNC can use to motivate their base. But fortunately you can keep a strong line on no abortions ever and not give them DNC much to use just by sticking to a clear, simple message - we believe life begins at conception and while it is regrettable that a woman may be forced to carry a child to conception we do not believe in murdering the child to avoid that.

The trick is in stopping people who believe in magical anti-rape hormones from rising to leadership positions within the party.