'It's a child not a choice...but not if you were raped'

S.A.M. said:
Lots of us have to face situations in life we may never be ready for. Killing people to avoid those choices seems to be a rather drastic option, don't you think?
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Certainly killing is a drastic option. But it is not always an avoidable one.

This is a dog-eat-dog world, and thinking that one can or should be able to live in it in perfect harmony and harmlessness with everyone and everything is simply delusion.
 
Mrs.Lucysnow said:
Sam you do realize that,

The human foetus feels no pain before 24 weeks, according to a major review of scientific evidence published today.
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Maybe, maybe not. The problem with scientific opinion is that it is also dictated by the same social mores that govern society. Don't forget this is the same group that denoted sexual expression of women as nymphomania and PMS as "hysteria". They also gave a Nobel prize for lobotomy as a cure for "hysteria" and other misunderstood mental aberrations. When they say, the human fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks, what they mean is..."by all the means of measures available to us...the human fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks", How do we know that the fetus is simply incapable of responding in a way that can be assessed? The heart starts beating at 12 weeks and the fetus can hear at 20 weeks. Thats is, we can now measure heart beats and fetal hearing at those stages, based on our current knowledge about these.

I refuse to believe that a fetus who can hear cannot feel his limbs being torn off. That just sounds incredible to me.
 
I refuse to believe that a fetus who can hear cannot feel his limbs being torn off. That just sounds incredible to me.
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what's incredible is how immoral your arguments really are.

you have some fixation on the suffering of a few minutes at most because of your desire to bring in more people but the enslavement and suffering that is much longer of children or people is not as big a deal to you as long as they have a 'chance' at life.

for someone who is a theist, that's actually quite hypocritical and deceptive but interestingly very common. muslims as well as christians believe that a child is innocent and go to heaven but you would rather bring them here. doesn't sound like you actually believe it or is this your desire of 'misery loves company' so bring in more people which you mask with 'chance at life'.
 
S.A.M. said:
Maybe, maybe not. The problem with scientific opinion is that it is also dictated by the same social mores that govern society. Don't forget this is the same group that denoted sexual expression of women as nymphomania and PMS as "hysteria". They also gave a Nobel prize for lobotomy as a cure for "hysteria" and other misunderstood mental aberrations. When they say, the human fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks, what they mean is..."by all the means of measures available to us...the human fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks", How do we know that the fetus is simply incapable of responding in a way that can be assessed? The heart starts beating at 12 weeks and the fetus can hear at 20 weeks. Thats is, we can now measure heart beats and fetal hearing at those stages, based on our current knowledge about these.

I refuse to believe that a fetus who can hear cannot feel his limbs being torn off. That just sounds incredible to me.
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Umm no Sam, its not the same group. I would venture to say that there has been progress in the last decades. You either want to accept scientific results or you don't. The Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists are not questioning a heart beat they are saying that the 'connections in the foetal brain are not fully formed in that time, nor is the foetus conscious'
 
birch said:
what's incredible is how immoral your arguments really are.

you have some fixation on the suffering of a few minutes at most because of your desire to bring in more people but the enslavement and suffering that is much longer of children or people is not as bit a deal to you as long as they have a 'chance' at life.
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I live in a Third World country, both my parents came from very poor backgrounds. I know how difficult life can be, I also know people can overcome the worst odds if given the opportunity perhaps that is one reason I don't consider life so cheap that it can be thrown away without a second's thought
 
S.A.M. said:
I live in a Third World country, both my parents came from very poor backgrounds. I know how difficult life can be, perhaps that is one reason I don't consider it so cheap that it can be thrown away without a second's thought
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actually i find your take on life to be rather cheap and not as concerned about quality of life.
 
S.A.M. said:
Which has little or nothing to do with the child itself, doesn't it?
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Like I noted earlier, a human never lives in a vacuum, so there actually is no such entity as "the child itself".

But much of the abortion debate (pro or con) presumes that humans live in such vacuums.


And yet, rather than change the attitudes of the parents, we seek to choose whether or not the child deserves to live.
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This just shows that the problem is being addressed only after it has progressed - which is how humans tend to act anyway.
For example, they started worrying about the effects of plastic only after its production and use were already wide-spread, at a point when it was already much more difficult to do something about it (now the choice is something like let many people lose their jobs, or continue the pollution; keeping jobs usually wins out).

I think the only real solution is to cultivate people to think ahead, not just a day, a week, or a year, but at least for a whole lifetime.


Do you know of any other ethical situation where the victim is held responsible/accountable for the act?
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Getting sick (you have to pay for the treatment); being the victim of bullying in the workplace (even if you win at court, you lose because you still lose your job and nobody will want to hire someone who has taken their employer to a tribunal); the legal hassle that surrounds being the victim of any crime (in the end, it is always your problem that you were raped, robbed, etc.).


This is where it is very evident how a materialist/reductionist paradigm of life leads to many grievous ethical problems that seem to have no solution.
 
Mrs.Lucysnow said:
Umm no Sam, its not the same group. I would venture to say that there has been progress in the last decades. You either want to accept scientific results or you don't. The Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists are not questioning a heart beat they are saying that the 'connections in the foetal brain are not fully formed in that time, nor is the foetus conscious'
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I've worked in paramedical research for two decades Lucy. A lot of my research is in metabolic nutrition so we see a lot of information about malnutrition and overnutrition and its effects on infants. I'm aware of developmental changes in the fetus, I'm also aware of how understanding of fetal metabolism has matured in just the two decades I have been in the field. I wouldn't be surprised if ten years later, they decided that we were not aware of pain responses in the fetus because we did not know enough about it

Although you are talking about pain, thats not in itself a reason to support or oppose abortion. If you could painlessly kill abandoned children, would you support such a move?

My point is that the fetus is an individual, a unique person and should have the same right to life that we extend to any child unwanted by its mother.

Signal said:
I think the only real solution is to cultivate people to think ahead, not just a day, a week, or a year, but at least for a whole lifetime.
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I think that underlies the distinction in the way we approach these things. Live in the moment or borrow it from your children's future.
 
S.A.M. said:
I've worked in paramedical research for two decades Lucy. A lot of my research is in metabolic nutrition so we see a lot of information about malnutrition and overnutrition and its effects on infants. I'm aware of developmental changes in the fetus, I'm also aware of how understanding of fetal metabolism has matured in just the two decades I have been in the field. I wouldn't be surprised if ten years later, they decided that we were not aware of pain responses in the fetus because we did not know enough about it

Although you are talking about pain, thats not in itself a reason to support or oppose abortion. If you could painlessly kill abandoned children, would you support such a move?

My point is that the fetus is an individual, a unique person and should have the same right to life that we extend to any child unwanted by its mother.
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I never said it was a reason to support or oppose abortion, women were having abortions waaay before those study results were released. I was just pointing the results out to you.

A foetus isn't an abandoned child Sam. You're framing of a foetus doesn't match mine at all so the question is irrelevant. A foetus is NOT an individual since the definition of individual connotes separate and single and refers to a person. A foetus is not yet a person.
 
A foetus isn't an abandoned child Sam. You're framing of a foetus doesn't match mine at all so the question is irrelevant.
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An aborted child is an unwanted child, Lucy. That is an abandoned child. Whether it is considered a person or not, whether it is considered a human being or not, the mother is clearly willing to erase its existence for whatever reason. If she were damaging it with alcohol or drugs instead, would it be any less abandoned?
 
S.A.M. said:
Maybe, maybe not. The problem with scientific opinion is that it is also dictated by the same social mores that govern society. Don't forget this is the same group that denoted sexual expression of women as nymphomania and PMS as "hysteria". They also gave a Nobel prize for lobotomy as a cure for "hysteria" and other misunderstood mental aberrations. When they say, the human fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks, what they mean is..."by all the means of measures available to us...the human fetus feels no pain at 24 weeks", How do we know that the fetus is simply incapable of responding in a way that can be assessed? The heart starts beating at 12 weeks and the fetus can hear at 20 weeks. Thats is, we can now measure heart beats and fetal hearing at those stages, based on our current knowledge about these.

I refuse to believe that a fetus who can hear cannot feel his limbs being torn off. That just sounds incredible to me.
Click to expand...

I think of this in terms of continuity:
Is there any point in my past where I would be allright with being killed?
Obviously not.
Even the thought of being miscarried at a few days is horrible.

I do not think of myself as having become someone at birth, or at age 18, or at 24 weeks or whenever, and I think most people are like that, despite what official science tells us.
I think most people have a sense of continuity that goes back to the point of conception.
 
S.A.M. said:
An aborted child is an unwanted child, Lucy. That is an abandoned child. Whether it is considered a person or not, whether it is considered a human being or not, the mother is clearly willing to erase its existence for whatever reason. If she were damaging it with alcohol or drugs instead, would it be any less abandoned?
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No then it would be a case of abuse not abandonment. I reject your framing as incorrect because what is being removed is part of the woman's body not human being who is independent of her. And since I do not consider a foetus a child you would have to say you are speaking of the abandonment of a foetus which I believe you would agree sounds ridiculous. You cannot desert something that has yet to exist, you are accusing women of abandoning a possibility, a potential.
 
Signal said:
I think of this in terms of continuity:
Is there any point in my past where I would be allright with being killed?
Obviously not.
Even the thought of being miscarried at a few days is horrible.

I do not think of myself as having become someone at birth, or at age 18, or at 24 weeks or whenever, and I think most people are like that, despite what official science tells us.
I think most people have a sense of continuity that goes back to the point of conception.
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Yes, I see it the same way. Looking back, at what point would I be alright with being killed? I'm not sure how "before being born" makes a difference
 
Mrs.Lucysnow said:
A child doesn't want the burn Signal. A child touches the hot plate because it doesn't know it is hot. A child is in the state of innocence a woman who decides on abortion is making an informed decision.
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You said:

If there is a god then I believe it would want for us whatever we want for ourselves.
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I am pointing out that the corollary of such thinking is absurd.
 
S.A.M. said:
Agree to all of the above. My point is, whose choice is it to abort? Not the childs and as the person most affected by that choice, it seems strange that the same people who would oppose mental/physical/emotional abuse of a child on the basis that they lack choice and need protection, would oppose the right of the child to decide whether he/she wants to take on these difficulties or not

For example, are there children, who have not been aborted, who when asked, would choose to have been aborted rather than face their difficult lives? Are there children born of rape who would prefer they never existed? We have the luxury of being alive to make that choice. Is it right to deprive a child, who does not even know what it means to be alive, of the same choice?

Would you for example, extend that luxury of choice to a mother who changes her mind after the child is born?

I oppose abortion philosophically as being unethical to take away consent from someone who is not able to defend himself or herself.
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Someone.

The fetus isn't even capable of consciousness well into the pregnancy (about 26 weeks) and remains unconscious after that.

Even without considering that, I find it disproportionate and wrong to expect a woman to give up her body for a fetus, but especially considering the facts on consciousness...

Wow, just wow.
 
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