CAPTAIN CAVEMAN

if life = life then chances are you're sitting among the processed corpses of innocent trees you MURDERER

crash_override

The arguement I tend to side with, at least as an American. Is that as an American citizen, you deserve the right to choose whether you want to be a parent or not. I mean, if you're so ****ing pro life then why don't you adopt all the babies that are born without responsible parents? Until you start doing so, your testimony/ opinions are stictly invalid.

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Neapolitan

When I said life = life I thought you would know that "human" was implied; human life = human life. Maybe your non humous flails are Freudian slips and you believe an unborn child's life is equal to dead cells, chairs and ants. On the otherhand, I believe an unborn child is human being.

toretorden,

I don't believe in Utilitarianism in justifing abortion.

What I said was a mother has life, you understand the importance of this statement, right? It would wrong to take the life of the mother, right? The unborn baby also has life, so therefore it would be wrong to take the life of the unborn baby. And I never said one was more important then the other, when I was talking about mother and unborn child.

child is a human being
an unborn baby is a human being
taking the life of an innocent child is wrong
human being = human being
If one believes taking a life of an innocent child is wrong, then one must come to the conclusion that taking the life of the unborn human being is wrong.

Astronomer

But then if you say an embryo/ early stage fetus is a human being, you'd also have to say that sperm are human beings, eggs are human beings, and that other human cells are human beings etc... and so the life of the mother does not equal the life of a human cell. I think that's what people coming from a scientific/ medical perspective are trying to say.

Sperm are also cells with life that have the potential to become a child... so do you think it's wrong to dispose of sperm wrongfully? You can't argue that life = life when looking at it from a medical perspective.

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Neapolitan

Your arguement is your arguement, I would never argued that a gamete of any species is the same as an fully form member of the species itself, so NO, I don't have to say that.

Anyway, "life=life" is taking out of context of the arguement that an unborn child has life that should be equally protected like the mother's life should be protected.

Just because I believe women should be pro-life, and I don't believe in abortion, what I said is called naive and all these nonsensical analogies and unphilosphical arguement are brought up to disprove that an unborn child is a human being that has a right to life.

And if you want to argue the medical perspective agrue this:

Hypcratic Oath

I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:
To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.

Astronomer

The Hippocratic Oath originated from about the 4th Century BC and in recent decades most physicians have chosen to abandon it in search of something more relevant to today's society - like the modern version written in the 1960s which doesn't include anything about doctor's and their power when it comes to abortion.

Anyway, it comes down to whether you believe an embryo or a fetus has the same kind of life as a human being. I believe, like Hesher said, that because spinal tissue and brain development doesn't occur until later in pregnancy, that up until then the fetus is not a human being but just has potential to become a human. And if you think its life should be spared just because it has potential to be human, then you must also consider the life of sperms and eggs to be sacred. Until then the mother is the only one capable of suffering and of rational thought, and consciousness, etc, and so her rights should come first. I can definitely understand how many people think otherwise, but this is just my belief.

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CanwllCorfe

EXACTLY! I planned on posting here but that sums up the main reason I'm pro choice.. amongst a few other things. I don't wanna debate.. I'm not good at it and I'm not gonna change my mind so I don't see the point.

You're a delicious flavor by the way!

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Your eyes were never yet let in to see the majesty and riches of the mind, but dwell in darkness; for your God is blind.

Guybrush

Neapolitan, if you value the human life over the ant life, you should make a point about it other than saying "life = life". We're not mind readers here.

I would still argue that your point of view makes no sense. I guess you know the utilitarian view, but I'll summarize for those who don't. From a utilitarian point of view, the right moral action/decision is the one that causes most happiness / least amount of suffering. By that logic, abortion is sometimes justified. Because none of us can read the future, we have to base moral decisions on the present. A fetus likely does not have the same capability of suffering as the mother, so it gets less moral consideration. It might have the same capability in the future, but we don't know that so that is irrelevant.

It's easy to see there's some kind of logic here - you want to ease suffering and make people happy - get the best results you can quality-of-life-wise. But what's the logic behind your moral stance? Okay, above all you want to preserve human life, but why? What makes it so holy? You say it's the same as killing a human, but abortion is legal in many places in the world where murder is outlawed so it's appearant that a lot don't agree with that "logic" either and there's a good reason. If you look at a fetus and then look at yourself, you'll see you're not the same. The fetus has potential, but having potential doesn't necessarily mean it should be protected like a person is.

I don't think human lives are any more special than those of animals. To me life is life and there's nothing holy about it. The difference is we generally have more emotional ties to people of our species. What matters are consequences. If someone was completely braindead and could only experience pain and the relatives thought it would be best if they were unplugged from the life support, I can see why that could be considered the right moral decision. It seems to me you could not support this because it would be murder.

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JKSmith

Just put them up for adoption if you don't want the baby. And stop having promiscuous sex. If you do, use a condom and the pill.

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"HATE, although an overrated concept, is just one of the basic building blocks of society, and although it does not cause PROGRESS, it does cause society to change, be it for the better or for the worse.

LOVE, on the other hand, does cause PROGRESS. Or, at least some type of MORAL MOTIVATION does. Without one of these, there would be no WARS, no REVOLUTIONS, no RISE or FALL of societies, groups or belief systems." --JK Smith

Hesher

Actually, you did, because abortions kill life forms that are not fully formed members of a species. If an undeveloped fetus has the same value as a human in your mind then yes, you are in fact saying that.

Most abortions do not kill unborn children. I do not agree with aborting children that could survive if delivered - that is murder. In the United States only 1.4% of abortions are carried out after 20 weeks or five months of pregnancy (which is one of the world's highest percentages), and no fetus can survive earlier than the 21st week. By 20 weeks, the bump is visible, you can feel it moving, and you can see the baby (and determine sex) on an ultrasound. If you haven't had an abortion by then, I think it should become illegal; you are so irresponsible to have waited five months before taking action when you had so many options leading up to this point. But the point is, before the 21st week, a fetus is not viable and is not a human. The fetus does not even gain a 50% survival chance until the 24th week. Therefore, it is not equal to another human life and therefore does not have rights as a human being. That is the SCIENCE.

It is naive and incorrect to assert that a pre-human fetus has the same value as a human being. It is a bundle of cells in the eyes of science and the law. Our analogies are not nonsensical, though they may be "unphilosphical" because philosophy, in this case, is irrelevant. There are facts, and then there are beliefs.

The vast majority of pro-life arguments are not based in logic, so trying to contend with them using it will lead you nowhere. As long as Neapolitan is willing to accept that his point of view is not medically or scientifically based, he is perfectly justified in maintaining his opinion, and we are perfectly justified in disagreeing in the strongest manner possible since matters of faith or religion do not and should not affect matters of state or legality.