the point is that nuclear proliferation was a zero sum game despite the fact that there was unlimited potential for each side to cause massive destruction to their enemies, and in doing so, acheiving a desirable end (from their point of view). the key preventive factor keeping Mutually Assured Destruction from actually happening was the superpowers abilities to assess risks and to do a cost-benefit analysis of any particular course of action.
this is the same thing i was talking about in the beginning of this debate, although the potential for an unborn child to be something amazing is unlimited, humanity at some point will have to assess the risks of overpopulation, homogeneity in populatiuons, distribution of finite resources...etc. and decide whether the cause of humans that already exist is furthered in some tangible way by bringing every unborn child into the world just because they have potential. think of it as human proliferation instead of arms proliferation. different subject, same zero sum game.
But if overpopulation is an issue why not just cull old folk - that have at least had the chance to live a full long life, or those on welfare, drug pushers, paedophiles, rapists etc?
It seems mighty bizarre to me that instead of that you would call for a slaughter of the completely innocent.
okinrus said:Well, nature made most woman capable of having children. Those who attempt to prevent natural fact risk having something bad occur.
okinrus said:Hopefully the law will extend to other countries. If a woman murders a US citizen(the fetus) in another country, she ought to be arrested and charged.
okinrus said:Well, going to a back alley to have an abortion is zealotry.
okinrus said:I'm not following you here. Men neither can have abortions nor give birth. Clearly the relationship remains unequal even if abortion is allowed.
okinrus said:Irrelevant to abortion.
I wasn't using it as an argument persay. I was merely pointing out that it's likely that any comprehensive contraceptive will have health problems, much like the documented risks with the pill.The oldest argument in the book. "Changing the natural order of things causes retribution by nature/the gods." Same argument was used to resist freeing slaves in the 19th century and some religious sects using medical intervention today. If you insist on this line of reasoning then you probably would argue that we ought not to cure diseases or predict where hurricanes are going to strike.
Well, no, it's not needed. For the pro-life argument to work, prolifers only need to show the fetus has some chance of being human being. For the prochoice argument to work, however, prochoicers must show the fetus is not a human being beyond any reasonable doubt.Okay, the legal question. Is a fertilized egg a human being and a citizen? I predict that this is where the crux of the matter will come to rest in the debate. Goes like this - Clearly a newborn baby is a human entitled to all human rights and legal protection. No one (I think) would suggest that an unfertilized egg is a human being. The question becomes - at what point in the development process can you draw a line and write "human" on one side and "not human" on the other?
Again, the material only indicates the existence of the human soul(or person). Not being able to observe souls directly, humans must determine who's a human being by material.A fertilized egg contains 46 chromosomes of human genetic material. But then, so does every one of your other cells with the exception of the sex cells. The only difference between a fertlized egg and a skin cell is that the fertilized egg has the potential to become a human, which is what other posters have been on about in this thread.
The cell used is altered substantially and the developing clone is distinct from the mother.Seems a straightforward distinction. But now we have the ability to take any cell and use its genetic material to make a clone.
When a cell is such suficiently altered, then the cell is a developing human being. But no one has cloned a human being. I don't know what will happend, but just going by our current knowledge, the clone is a human being.Does that make any cell in your body a potential human being?
No, what you call a potential human, I'd call a human in development.Okay, you say, a potential human is one where a cell can become a fully actualized human without technological intervention.
To my knowledge, parthenogenesis has never occurred in humans. (Your link is broken) Nevertheless, I don't see why it would be treated any different from human twins.But what of natural parthenogenesis, where an egg does not get rid of half its genetic material during formation and then begins dividing? Makes a natural clone, which has been documented and can now be induced artificially (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4228992.stm).
Zealotry depends on your view. Obviously, a zealot cannot hold his own zealotry as zealotry. To him, it's perfectly natural. Therefore, I'll give you an example. Suppose plastic surgery was banned, and suppose, too, that woman by thousands go to illegal back alley surgens whom they will pay to be cut up using non-sterile tools, risk infection, and risk, too, disfigurement. Wouldn't these woman be zealots?This is a weak assertion - don't confuse zealotry with desperation, okinrus. Zealotry would be a women going out and getting pregnant on purpose just so she could go and get an abortion. Kind of like an extreme political action. THAT would be zealotry.
The simple option is for the woman to leave such a relationship.It sets up an example that is to be wondered at by every woman who is in a relationship with a man who considers her inferior by virtue of her gender. This is a powerful metaphor which is to be resisted at all costs.
Well, define what you mean by superior? Most men are stronger than most woman. For physical strentgth, most men are superior than most woman. But athletics is a combination of skill and strength.Men and women are different. They look different and their bodies do different things. Does this necessarily imply superiority of one over the other?
Again, difficult to say what you mean by inequality. Men can't do all the things woman do, and woman can't do all the things men do. Only when the relationship works as one is the relationship together. But each shares a part in the relatinship.Does this imply inherent inequality in any given male/female relationship? Because if that is what you are asserting, then we've got a problem.
Yes I do, contraception and premarital sex are considered wrong by these groups, but forcibly preventing consenting adults is completely different from believing them to be wrong.This was in response to my final statement "You watch - once abortion gets re-criminalized they'll be after contraception next and then pre-marital sex and so on until the whole christian sharia is in place. "
Prince_James said:charles cure:
I think this is rooted in somewhat of a misinterpreation of MAD v. abortion/life. Whilst one can -never- tell what is going to happen in life, MAD was "mutually assured destruction" because the results -were- known as overwhelmingly "total annihilation". There was very little chance of getting away with a nuclear attack.
Prince_James said:Now, in life, one could potentially have a "perfectly great" or "perfectly horrible" life, but since life's quality is subjective, cannot be presciently determined, et cetera, these are only "improbable extremes" and the reality is likely somewhere betwixt the twain.
SnakeLord said:But if overpopulation is an issue why not just cull old folk - that have at least had the chance to live a full long life, or those on welfare, drug pushers, paedophiles, rapists etc?
It seems mighty bizarre to me that instead of that you would call for a slaughter of the completely innocent.
okinrus said:Well, no, it's not needed. For the pro-life argument to work, prolifers only need to show the fetus has some chance of being human being. For the prochoice argument to work, however, prochoicers must show the fetus is not a human being beyond any reasonable doubt.
i was making an arguement for why abortion should be a legally sanctioned choice, because i support freedom of action as it pertains to decisions that people make about their own bodies.
and by the way, you dont think a world where the human population both grows exponentially from decade to decade and depends on finite, expendable resources and limited space wont result in a similar scenario to "total aanihilation"? delusional.
and coupled with that you and i seem to have a disparity of views on what constitutes complete innocence. i would argue that innocence or guilt, and good or evil intent is decided based on the evidence of someones actions as a person. an unborn child has no ability to act and therefore cant be considered guilty or innocent. one is not innocent by default because they have not had the chance to do anything at all.
i also dont think that a blastocyst, zygote, gamete, or fetus constitutes an independently viable and survivable person
if you would like to test this theory, think of what would happen if a mother were to give birth to a child in the middle of a field and then walk away from it. how long would it live?
Theirs is merely another unsubstantiated claim based on their faith, which isn't 'right,' nonetheless.
But, that isn't the case, is it? We don't need to imagine their suffering to know they are suffering.
That has nothing to do with the fact that they are suffering and that we can understand they are suffering.
It's a matter of not knowing what they'll achieve in their lives, whether good or bad. The same argument you used with Lincoln.
Come now, aren't you being somewhat ridiculous? Are we in need of placing the defintion of suffering before you?
Sorry, but from a scientific point of view, the argument could be justified either way and from a variety of views and scenarios. Yours appears to be an argument from emotion - correct me if I'm wrong here.
right but there was still potential to get away with the attack because of a number of variables that effected the outcome. so in relation to your little theory, why not try it JUST IN CASE it works. because you know, theres unlimited potential.
actually i think you have it mixed up. the one who is in no position and has no ability to judge what their quality of life will be like is the unborn child. if i, as an unborn child had the ability to understand anything, and somone told me while i was in the womb, hey look, youre going to be born to a single mom in the middle of the poorest region of Liberia, where you are likely to be killed before the age of 5 in a long and pointless civil war, and if you make it to beyond 10 or 12 you are likely to be given an AK-47 and made to fight in that war, and then if you continue to live, by the time you are old enough to be sexually active, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting AIDS and dying, i would say you know what, pull the plug.
but the fetus cant judge what its quality of life may be because it is not intelligent enough to do so, however, an intelligent adult does have the necessary mental faculties to make an informed decision about what a child will have to face growing up and whether or not it is fair and right to bring them into the world that way, for either the child or the parent, because the child is dependent on the parent and so they are forever altering not only the life of a potential child, but their own as well, so it would be unfair to force a person to keep a child knowing that it will negatively affect them in serious ways if it is born.
you cant just throw it into a dumpster once its born and forget about it, so dont give me that bullshit about nobody being in a position to judge effectively what the possible outcome of bringing a child into the world is, the parents are the ones in the position to make that decision and they have to, abortion allows them to have the choice, does not mandate that they make the choice.
and yeah i know that if you have a child that you dont want you can put it up for adoption, but imagine adding an extra 1,293,000 (thats the estimate of how many abortions there were in the US in 2004) to the adoption pool every year. there would be no one to take them and they would wind up abandoned as wards of the state. why dont you do some research on that quality of life.
and by the way, you dont think a world where the human population both grows exponentially from decade to decade and depends on finite, expendable resources and limited space wont result in a similar scenario to "total aanihilation"? delusional.
okinrus said:Not being able to observe souls directly, humans must determine who's a human being by material.
Prince_James said:The definition of humanity is rooted in genetics. This is what determines what human "is". If a human zygote is genetically distinct from both mother and father, we must assert that its humanity is evident.
te jen said:Humanity is far, far more than genetic code.
SnakeLord said:I for one would not argue against people having the right to make decisions concerning their own bodies. I, for instance, have a couple of tattoos - and nobody else has the right to tell me that I can't 'deface' my body in such manner. But we're not talking "their own bodies", are we? We're not talking nipple piercings or sex changes, we're not talking drug abusing or the choice to amputate one of your limbs for the sake of it. No, we are talking the extermination of an individual being - not 'owned' by anyone - that has as much right to life and existence as you do.
I was adopted. It is quite probable to state that I wasn't wanted. I get this notion from the fact that I was adopted. Sure, there are other possibilities, but for the sake of this debate, this explanation shall suffice.
I was born In september, (It's actually my birthday on Monday ), which means my parents were doing the business at christmas. You'll find that the most common birth month is actually September, (because everyone's at it during christmas). So after the christmas you find lots of unwanted pregnancies. Now, before I was born people just like you most likely sat down and argued that I was just a zygote, or no different to skin cells, or wouldn't survive long with an ak47, or would die straight away if left in a field - but these arguments are meaningless. I am the proof, as are you, that what you are saying can be happily killed without a say in the matter - will most likely debate against his own demise when he has the ability to. An inability to say "please don't kill me", is not an instant right for you to do so. You, my mother, the man up the road, some idiot in government etc have no right to kill me. I couldn't have argued about the issue with you back then, but that doesn't mean anything - and nor does it stop my right to life.
My 'body' does not belong to my mother, and it never has. I borrowed space inside of her for less than a year.. that does not give her the right to kill me. She can kill herself if she wishes, but why think she can speak for me?
But as I argued, why not then just kill paedophiles, rapists, murderers and old people?
This is not an argument to anything. A 6 month old child can't really do anything considered guilty or innocent but still you have no right to slaughter him. He can't stop you from doing so, he cannot in any way defend his right to life, and he cannot be measured as guilty or innocent - but innocent until proven guilty is default. His right to life cannot be argued, and until such time where it was shown that this person was indeed not worthy of life, he is considered completely innocent. The exact same thing goes for the smaller version of him hitching a ride in someone's womb.
Once again, you seemingly prefer the death of the innocent over the death of paedophiles, rapists and murderers. Might I ask if you even agree with capital punishment? You're probably out there defending the right to life of people that do not deserve it, while sitting here arguing against the right to life of those that cannot defend it.
You should.. you were one. Imagine that.. from such small beginnings to something that can type on the internet. So you were a lot smaller and couldn't talk - I bet it would piss you off right now if someone decided to kill you. It might not be independently survivable, but then neither is my grandmother. She requires round the clock assistance.. I don't just kill the old dear because I don't want the hassle, because she is 'unwanted'.
What does this argument aid? Yes, the child would die.. So would my grandmother - and most likely if I dumped you in the middle of the jungle so would you. But what are you saying? That because a child's limbs are weak, that it's brain is still developing in a world that they have no clue about, and that it would die without being looked after that it has no right to life? Once more I point at my grandmother.
No wait.. forget my grandmother, she's just old, what about cripples and retards? Shall we kill them too? Do we have that right?
What a child can or cannot do if plopped out in the middle of a field is not an argument for abortion being justified. It's not an argument for anything
SnakeLord said:I for one would not argue against people having the right to make decisions concerning their own bodies. I, for instance, have a couple of tattoos - and nobody else has the right to tell me that I can't 'deface' my body in such manner. But we're not talking "their own bodies", are we? We're not talking nipple piercings or sex changes, we're not talking drug abusing or the choice to amputate one of your limbs for the sake of it. No, we are talking the extermination of an individual being - not 'owned' by anyone - that has as much right to life and existence as you do.
SnakeLord said:I was adopted. It is quite probable to state that I wasn't wanted. I get this notion from the fact that I was adopted. Sure, there are other possibilities, but for the sake of this debate, this explanation shall suffice.
I was born In september, (It's actually my birthday on Monday ), which means my parents were doing the business at christmas. You'll find that the most common birth month is actually September, (because everyone's at it during christmas). So after the christmas you find lots of unwanted pregnancies. Now, before I was born people just like you most likely sat down and argued that I was just a zygote, or no different to skin cells, or wouldn't survive long with an ak47, or would die straight away if left in a field - but these arguments are meaningless. I am the proof, as are you, that what you are saying can be happily killed without a say in the matter - will most likely debate against his own demise when he has the ability to. An inability to say "please don't kill me", is not an instant right for you to do so. You, my mother, the man up the road, some idiot in government etc have no right to kill me. I couldn't have argued about the issue with you back then, but that doesn't mean anything - and nor does it stop my right to life.
My 'body' does not belong to my mother, and it never has. I borrowed space inside of her for less than a year.. that does not give her the right to kill me. She can kill herself if she wishes, but why think she can speak for me?
SnakeLord said:But as I argued, why not then just kill paedophiles, rapists, murderers and old people?
SnakeLord said:This is not an argument to anything. A 6 month old child can't really do anything considered guilty or innocent but still you have no right to slaughter him. He can't stop you from doing so, he cannot in any way defend his right to life, and he cannot be measured as guilty or innocent - but innocent until proven guilty is default. His right to life cannot be argued, and until such time where it was shown that this person was indeed not worthy of life, he is considered completely innocent. The exact same thing goes for the smaller version of him hitching a ride in someone's womb.
Once again, you seemingly prefer the death of the innocent over the death of paedophiles, rapists and murderers. Might I ask if you even agree with capital punishment? You're probably out there defending the right to life of people that do not deserve it, while sitting here arguing against the right to life of those that cannot defend it.
SnakeLord said:You should.. you were one. Imagine that.. from such small beginnings to something that can type on the internet. So you were a lot smaller and couldn't talk - I bet it would piss you off right now if someone decided to kill you. It might not be independently survivable, but then neither is my grandmother. She requires round the clock assistance.. I don't just kill the old dear because I don't want the hassle, because she is 'unwanted'.
SnakeLord said:What a child can or cannot do if plopped out in the middle of a field is not an argument for abortion being justified. It's not an argument for anything.
Adstar said:I'm impressed. A well constructed post.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
water said:"Sex must be had! Sex is a must! People must have sex, or they are not normal!"
Anyone ever wondered whether the above assertions are true?
te jen said:So why are you bringing the soul into the discussion? Souls are not observable and so therefore are irrelevant. Regarding "material", Prince James says:
Humanity is far, far more than genetic code. Rooted, possibly; a certain sequence of base pairs does indeed indicate the POTENTIAL for a human being, but I vehemently assert that a zygote can not be considered human because NONE of the additional attributes that mean humanity are present.
You have backed yourselves into a rhetorical corner by arguing that potentiality equals actuality. And don't try to worm out of it by declaring that potentiality only arises at the moment of conception. You must acknowledge that sperm and egg separately have the same potential to make a human being as the just-created zygote. If you deny this than your argument collapses. If you accept this, then you must be implying that it is every woman's moral duty to see that she bears children from the earliest possible moment until the inset of menopause, so that none of the potential humans in her ovaries suffers negligent homicide.