$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'I')'m fully on-board with the idea that women can hack up all the Pre-babies they like... or full grown adults for that matter.
And deal with the consequences... just like anybody else.
PeakOil is You
THE Topic of Abortion Thread (merged)
Re: Abortion Question?
by smallpoxgirl » Sun 25 Mar 2007, 11:12:50
Calling something with gills or something that will develop gills a pre-baby is just manipulative nonsense. The vast majority of abortions are done at a stage of development where an expert embryologist probably couldn't distinguish a human embryo from a lizard embryo.
The potential of a fetus to at some point in the future become a person, is only relevant if we had some dire freaking need to fulfill that potential. If humans were at imminent risk of extinction, then I would happily grant the moral importance of a fetus. We are in fact, at greatest danger from an excess in our numbers. The potential of creating another person is a potential with no value and a potential that is best left unrecognized.
"We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
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Re: Abortion Question?
by entropyfails » Sun 25 Mar 2007, 11:26:27
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RonMN', 'W')OW gg3...I could spend hours picking apart that piece of propaganda...But I have better things to do with my saturday 
And yet, here you are, not listening or reading that which you solicited for.
While I agree with gg3's position that we need to take a more nuanced view of abortion, I disagree with his "functioning brain" metric. I disagree for the same reasons as Aaron, namely it then just becomes an argument of "how smart is smart enough?" If you've read a lot of the Vegan position papers, you'll see how this is not a slippery slope rhetorical technique but an actual slippery slope! *grin*
It doesn't seem like RonMN wants to have a discussion on the legal position of "human being," so we can simply say that the US law defines a human as a fetus that has been birthed. That, by definition makes abortion not murder.
So obviously, RonMN wants to have an argument about when an animal with human DNA becomes a "person". Of course, THAT argument has nothing at all to do with abortion, but RonMN wants to drag it in for the shock value and to include the religious morals that RonMN wishes to preach. But it is fair to point out his motives, I think.
As for the real question of when an animal becomes a "person", the answer, as many have stated, is that there is no "point" that defines it. You are, in fact, the result of a continuous, uninterrupted process of life that has been on this planet for billions of years. The sperm from your father was alive. The egg from your mother was alive. Before the sperm entered the egg, they were obviously separated. After the sperm enters, it STILL is obviously separated. (you could pluck the bugger out if you had small enough tweezers and were fast enough). After the outer wall of the sperm dissolves, there is STILL no full sequence of DNA. You have to wait a while for the machinery of life to transport the 2 separate bit streams and combine them into one. At the end of that process, you have a single cell with a new DNA sequence.
But what other single human cells with unique DNA sequences do we know about that we kill on sight? Oh right... cancer... and virus infected cells. If you off one of these buggers, you won't find RonMN trying to get you put in jail. No, he only cares about the ones created by sex. (Religion is a tricky beast and always uses sex for control) Aaron hit the nail on the head again. "Good" killing and "bad" killing are a matter of perspective.
This whole, "life beings at conception" seems like double nonsense to me. As I and others have mentioned, the whole "conception" word is actually just a mask for a very complicated process with no perfectly clear beginning or ending. But more importantly to me is the first word of that statement, "life". Because you cannot define it at all.
Take a virus, for example. Most of the time, they just float along doing nothing more interesting than a rock. They only become "alive" when they bump up against a cell that they can dock to. Are they dead things that come back to life? Or take the freezing bacteria of Antarctica. They have anti-freeze inside of them to keep their cell structures intact during the cold winter, but they have absolutely no "life process" during the time they are frozen. They are no more "alive" than the fish in your freezer. But when the thaw comes, the life process starts up again. Do they die and come back to life? Are they alive all the time? Our definition of "life" is very fuzzy and incomplete. When you put these 2 fuzzy concepts of "life" and "conception" together in the same sentence, you can easily make an argument for pretty much anything.
I personally take a computational view of life. If you've seen any of the recent cell biology visualizations, you know that our cells are just big protein machines. They simply process inputs and outputs given the needed amount of energy. The way they process energy is encoded by your DNA. So what makes the "baby" cell more important than a "cancer cell"? Absolutely nothing. They are just 2 machines running slightly different versions of EarthLife 1.7.
Being good caretakers of our body, we kill the unwanted cancer cell machines. Likewise, to be good caretakers of our environment, we should kill the unwanted baby cell machines.
So I'll be a "pro-abortionist." I think we need MORE abortions. There is not nearly enough aborting going on in this world.
The world can make as many people as we have food for (or any other limiting resource). WHY would you want to make UNWANTED people, given that fact?
EntropyFails
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
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Re: Abortion Question?
by emersonbiggins » Sun 25 Mar 2007, 11:51:11
Post of the thread, if not the year. Bravo, entropyfails!
"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin
George Carlin
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Re: Abortion Question?
by Aaron » Sun 25 Mar 2007, 12:53:00
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'I')'m fully on-board with the idea that women can hack up all the Pre-babies they like... or full grown adults for that matter.
And deal with the consequences... just like anybody else.
And deal with the consequences... just like anybody else.
Calling something with gills or something that will develop gills a pre-baby is just manipulative nonsense. The vast majority of abortions are done at a stage of development where an expert embryologist probably couldn't distinguish a human embryo from a lizard embryo.
The potential of a fetus to at some point in the future become a person, is only relevant if we had some dire freaking need to fulfill that potential. If humans were at imminent risk of extinction, then I would happily grant the moral importance of a fetus. We are in fact, at greatest danger from an excess in our numbers. The potential of creating another person is a potential with no value and a potential that is best left unrecognized.
No offense... but if it ain't a "pre-baby" then what the heck is it?
I'm fairly certain it won't morph into a crouching tiger or hidden dragon or anything.
I violently agree... kill em by the thousands if you think it's a good idea. We will let you know if we object on a case by case basis.
But baby fetus, or iguana fetus or alien fetus... if you chop it up, I guarantee that you are killing it.
Whatever it is...
We like to mask brutal reality inside a more palatable shell these days. Murder sounds so macho... so masculine.
But equating abortion to cancer surgery... wow.
I thought I was brutal... I stand corrected.
The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt, but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise... economics is a form of brain damage.
Hazel Henderson
Hazel Henderson
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