Abortion

[BluffTHIS!]

Then are your making a moral point?

[David Sklansky]

"Then are your making a moral point?"

No

As I have said before, my job is to show holes in arguments. Whether they come to conclusions I agree with or not. If someone said for instance that it is the right thing to kill a baby (painlessly) who resulted from a rape, as long as that baby was either in the womb or so young that they didn't yet know they existed, I would neither agree or disagree. Unless I could show that such a stance was inconsistent with other stances that person held.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

David argues the validity of peoples claims/arguments regardless of which way he personally leans all the time.

[superleeds]

When you implied it was murder

[mosta]

the real problem with resolving the abortion issue is this country's pathetically sentimental attachement to all the cute little babies. even ignoring the complete political and intellectual bankruptcy expressed by "children first!" politics, the simple fact is that infants are easily replaceable, indistinguishable, and of no immediate use or value to society or their families. really what's there to miss? "abortion" should be allowed up until, I'd say, about 5 years of age.

[mslif]

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The line has to be drawn somewhere.

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Drawing that line at conception achieves the same purpose without the possibility of taking an innocent human life.

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I understand your point. Life begins at conception. What we have to look at is the difinition of a Human Person and not Being
Human person: Any form of human life that is also considered a person, and thereby has civil rights, including the right to life.
There is a societal consensus that a newborn is a human person. People disagree about whether a zygote, embryo, or fetus is a human person. People have different opinions about the stage at which human life becomes a human person. I think this is the core disagreement that drives the abortion wars.
I believe that you become a human person when you can breath on your own and survive outside the mother's womb.

I was raised christian but I am also pursuing graduate studies which have an emphasis on cellular biology. I am defintely torn between all sides here.
I think the issues of abortion should be looked at rationally not emotionally and definitely not religiously.

[mosta]

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I refer to it as fuzzy thinking because the bottom line scientific fact, is that life begins at conception. In fact medical textbooks consider it such. Any other point you pick is arbitrary (in the big picture view, obviously it may not seem arbitrary if it is your opinion) and hence, fuzzy.

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and what are the things that conception comes from? cells aren't life? what are they then?

[superleeds]

[ QUOTE ]
I refer to it as fuzzy thinking because the bottom line scientific fact, is that life begins at conception

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Got a link?

Heres some
when does life begin?

it's a slogan, isn't it?

[thatguy11]

How different is abortion from someone getting charged with a double homicide when killing a pregnant woman? I don't quite remember all of the legal history on this but it was (a long time ago) determined to be a murder at the time of "stirring" or when the baby could survive if separated from its mother. An interesting point is presented here in the original post that soon if not now, scientists can keep a fetus or mass of cells, however you want to define it, alive from the point of conception and allow it to grow. If Abortion is legal or illegal when do you think someone should get a double vs. a single homicide for killing a pregnant woman?

[vulturesrow]

A cell is a part of a larger whole. The cell on its own is not a life in the sense that an unborn child is. A sperm or an egg cannot spontaneously develop into something else. It is a genetic building block and nothing more. Contrast this with an unborn child that is integrated, self directed, and genetically complete. To put it another way, people dont refer to themselves as having once been a sperm or an egg. But they do say things such as "Before I was born" or "when I was a fetus".