Terms in the abortion debate

[Ibelsd]

Fetus: A medical term referring to an unborn individual of a given species.

Child: A social term indicating that one individual is the ward or offspring of another.

Baby: A common term for an individual of a pre-adolescent or younger age. Typically largely helpless without its parents.

Baby is arguably the most humanizing and endearing term. We use it with a lot of emotional impact. Child is a social definition, it has meaning and significance but less specific endearment. Fetus is clinical and de-humanizing to some degree.

If you are trying to make an argument with a strong emotional impact against abortion, use the world Baby. If you are trying to minimize emotional impact as a pro-choice advocate, use Fetus. If you want some middle ground "unborn child" is probably the best middle ground.

For me, personhood is a pretty squishy concept but a real one. I can't look at a very early fetus and say, "that's a person." I don't identify people in my society by their DNA. I do so far more by my senses and by their social impact. But as a fetus develops, I definatley begin to think of it as a person, specifically a child. The further it gets along, the stronger that association. The earlier an abortion is performed, the less qualms I have about it. I have none for mechanisms like the morning after pill. The later an abortion is performed, the more revolted and morally outraged I am by it.

I don't find arguments based on (Human + Unique + Alive = person as persuasive) on this matter. Nor do I find those that say that until it is born, it is not a person. My heart, my head, and my common sense rejects both of these extremes.

Here, I think, you and I are the moderates in this debate and probably the most reasonable. It is not black and white as pro-life and pro-choice folks will protest. It is simply not simple. At some point, as a society, we simply need to draw an arbitrary line and proclaim this is where life begins. This is where it is no longer ok to have an abortion. I think it is somewhere between conception and birth. The problem is that short of absolute victory neither of the extremists will settle. For pro-life people it is an issue of moral faith and murder. For people on the pro-choice side it is basically a religious belief and person identity. So, at some point, us reasonable folks need to ignore the squeaky wheels and just make a decision. There are a host of political reasons why this won't happen in my lifetime, but dare to dream. And I do dream, as the abortion debate has been one of the most draining and insufferable public discourses held during my lifetime. Basically, two sets of people whom I can rarely tolerate yelling at each other about how evil the other one is. Feminazis and Evangelicals.... Oye vay!

[Belthazor]

At some point, as a society, we simply need to draw an arbitrary line and proclaim this is where life begins. This is where it is no longer ok to have an abortion. I think it is somewhere between conception and birth.

An "arbitrary line" is the "best" choice?
Could you expand on that point please?

and

What is the reason late term abortions should be regulated more than earlier term abortions, or should they be?
I have never heard anything other than emotional appeals or aesthetics to answer this question?

[mican333]

An "arbitrary line" is the "best" choice?
Could you expand on that point please?

and

What is the reason late term abortions should be regulated more than earlier term abortions, or should they be?
I have never heard anything other than emotional appeals or aesthetics to answer this question?

But then it's the same issue (emotional appeal or aesthetics) no matter where we draw the line. No one has ever both drawn a line (any iine) and then defended it without resorting to emotional appeal or some form of subjective reasoning. So quite simply, the criticism that you are offering for those who think there should be limits at third trimester but not first trimester applies just as well to where you want to set limits. You might have a different line where you think the law should offer restrictions but you can't really justify it any better than those who think the restrictions should apply at third trimester. You can use a different argument but ultimately the argument will be rooted in subjectivity.

So subjectively setting restrictions at third trimester is not really different than setting it at conception.

[Belthazor]

But then it's the same issue (emotional appeal or aesthetics)

Exactly

---------- Post added at 07:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:49 PM ----------

No one has ever both drawn a line (any iine) and then defended it without resorting to emotional appeal or some form of subjective reasoning.

And you are forwarding an objective source exists to appeal to?

---------- Post added at 07:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:51 PM ----------

You might have a different line where you think the law should offer restrictions but you can't really justify it any better than those who think the restrictions should apply at third trimester.

I didn't say what my thoughts were on this. I was asking for some one to defend that late term abortions might need restriction but earlier term would not. Or conversely, why that should not be the case.

---------- Post added at 08:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:59 PM ----------

So subjectively setting restrictions at third trimester is not really different than setting it at conception.

Please define conception.

[mican333]

I didn't say what my thoughts were on this. I was asking for some one to defend that late term abortions might need restriction but earlier term would not. Or conversely, why that should not be the case.

As I've said in the past, questions are not argument. But don't worry, I'm not going to stone-wall you with that. I will provide an answer but only on the condition that you don't ask me more questions about my answer. In other words, you can use the answer for the basis of an argument but if you are just going to ask more and more questions about my answer instead of forwarding a debate position based on it, then my answer doesn't really lead to a debate-worthy exchange and therefore I don't see much reason to give it.

So do we have a deal?

Please define conception.

Why? Considering you've been arguing that conception is where the "human" attains the right to life, I have to assume you know what conception means. So whatever you think it means is what I was referring to (since I was referring to your argument when I said "conception").

[Belthazor]

As I've said in the past, questions are not argument. But don't worry, I'm not going to stone-wall you with that. I will provide an answer but only on the condition that you don't ask me more questions about my answer. In other words, you can use the answer for the basis of an argument but if you are just going to ask more and more questions about my answer instead of forwarding a debate position based on it, then my answer doesn't really lead to a debate-worthy exchange and therefore I don't see much reason to give it.

So do we have a deal?

Umm....., huh?

I don't ask questions just to confuse the issue. Generally, it's to clarify my opponents position You are of course , free to choose what you answer or not.
So, answer if you want to continue I guess???
I'm just trying to move forward in the debate.

---------- Post added at 11:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:01 PM ----------

Why? Considering you've been arguing that conception is where the "human" attains the right to life, I have to assume you know what conception means. So whatever you think it means is what I was referring to (since I was referring to your argument when I said "conception").

No wonder we are having issues.
My position is closer to "conception is the beginning of a new life". In this case, a new human life....
Do you agree????

[mican333]

I don't ask questions just to confuse the issue. Generally, it's to clarify my opponents position You are of course , free to choose what you answer or not.
So, answer if you want to continue I guess???
I'm just trying to move forward in the debate.

Ok. Here’s my answer.

Generally speaking, from the pro-choice perspective, the closer a fetus comes to term, the more legal protections it should have. So while a late-term fetus does not have the full legal rights of the born (otherwise if there was a decision between saving the fetus or saving the mother, it wouldn't be uniformly decided that the mother is the one who needs to be saved but instead would be a significant ethical dilemma), it's justifiable to have significant restrictions on whether the fetus can be aborted.

My position is closer to "conception is the beginning of a new life". In this case, a new human life....
Do you agree????

That my be your position but it's not a good definition. Here's the dictionary definition and likewise is the one I was using when I said "conception".

"the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation or both"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conception

Do you agree with that as a valid definition?


And here's something I learned recently. About 50% of fertilized human eggs don't implant and therefore die. So I guess they are killed by nature or arguably the mother (although it would be hard to hold her morally responsible for what her body does without her personal agreement). So if one is to hold that it's murder for a fertilized egg to be killed, it appears nature is a huge mass-murder for killing roughly half of the human race (if we count all fertilized eggs as part of the human race).

[Belthazor]

Generally speaking, from the pro-choice perspective, the closer a fetus comes to term, the more legal protections it should have. So while a late-term fetus does not have the full legal rights of the born (otherwise if there was a decision between saving the fetus or saving the mother, it wouldn't be uniformly decided that the mother is the one who needs to be saved but instead would be a significant ethical dilemma), it's justifiable to have significant restrictions on whether the fetus can be aborted.

So carefully guarded that your answer is, since you have no reason whatsoever given as to why it should be this way, it is a purely arbitrary choice.
I would speculate (as did Sig.) most people find abortion less appealing the more the fetus "looks" like a human, IOW: "that life only matters when it looks human enough."
Or, later term the fetus "looks " like a "baby"/"human".

---------- Post added at 09:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:30 PM ----------

"the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation or both"

Pregnant in this case is "with a human child".

However, to your "semantic argument". I am fairly sure that this doctor thought he was helping to bring a new human life.!!


"Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., P.h.D. was the first scientist to succeed at in vitro fertilization:
“The zygote is human life….there is one fact that no one can deny; Human beings begin at conception.”

---------- Post added at 09:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 PM ----------

And here's something I learned recently. About 50% of fertilized human eggs don't implant and therefore die. So I guess they are killed by nature or arguably the mother (although it would be hard to hold her morally responsible for what her body does without her personal agreement). So if one is to hold that it's murder for a fertilized egg to be killed, it appears nature is a huge mass-murder for killing roughly half of the human race (if we count all fertilized eggs as part of the human race)

So you are forwarding "nature" made a conscious choice to abort those 50%. Please support this.
And, if you could, this equates to a mother KILLING HER OWN CHILD ON PURPOSE!
(AFTER CAUSING IT TO "BE" IN THI FIRST PLACE!!)

[Ibelsd]

An "arbitrary line" is the "best" choice?
Could you expand on that point please?

and

What is the reason late term abortions should be regulated more than earlier term abortions, or should they be?
I have never heard anything other than emotional appeals or aesthetics to answer this question?

As Mican already explained, and I agree, any line we set is arbitrary. Whether that line is set at conception or seconds prior to birth, it will be considered subjective. As a society, we draw arbitrary lines all the time (i.e. age of consent). Laws are simply agreements the people in a society make to keep peace and, hopefully, expand prosperity. So, as a society, we'd have more peace if we could all agree on some arbitrary line where we say abortion is ok/not ok.

Why should later term abortions be regulated more than earlier term abortions? Look, maybe, they shouldn't. However, about 50% of society believes all abortion is wrong. Significantly more people believe that late term abortions are wrong. So, as a society, we tend to value the unborn the closer they get to being conceived.

[mican333]

So carefully guarded that your answer is, since you have no reason whatsoever given as to why it should be this way, it is a purely arbitrary choice.

You didn't ask me why it should be this way. You asked me why pro-choices have different standards for early-term and late-term pregnancies and I gave you a very accurate answer. You have in no way shown that it's inaccurate.

I do admit that my answer is very general. But then when the answer involves the views of millions of people who are likely factoring a wide variety of different factors, a very general answer is the only option if one wants to give an accurate response

I would speculate (as did Sig.) most people find abortion less appealing the more the fetus "looks" like a human, IOW: "that life only matters when it looks human enough."

But then that is speculation. I didn't speculate but instead gave an accurate answer. And I don't agree that that is how pro-choice thinking works so you will have to support it before it is accepted

Pregnant in this case is "with a human child".

However, to your "semantic argument". I am fairly sure that this doctor thought he was helping to bring a new human life.!!

What doctor? And besides that, you did not rebut my question when you asked what conception means. So I will repeat it:

You might have a different line where you think the law should offer restrictions but you can't really justify it any better than those who think the restrictions should apply at third trimester. You can use a different argument but ultimately the argument will be rooted in subjectivity.

So subjectively setting restrictions at third trimester is not really different than setting it at conception.

So you are forwarding "nature" made a conscious choice to abort those 50%. Please support this.

I did not say that nature made a conscious choice. But I am saying that if one holds that it's a human being at the moment that sperm meets egg, they should be very upset that half of all embryos are killed by this natural process. And yet, I've never heard anyone ever express remorse over this. So I conclude that no one is too concerned about this which shows that people are not that invested in the life of the fetus at the moment that egg meets sperm. I mean are you particularly bothered that half of all human embryos die before birth?

I can believe that you weren't bothered by this before because you were unaware of this fact (I just learned it recently myself). But now that you do know, do you have a problem with this?

[PGA2]

You are joking, right???

"If [I] want to apply the term 'Human being?'" Is it human or is it something else? Is it living?

I see you are missing my point entirely. I'm not saying you can't apply the term nor am I saying that the term is inaccurate. I'm saying that just because you can accurately apply a word to something doesn't mean anything other than the word applies. So a strictly semantic argument doesn't mean anything.

Let me demonstrate this with an example. I'm going to introduce a made-up word - Harkus. We can debate whether "Harkus" applies to the unborn and if the person who argues that it does apply wins the argument, then it does apply. But that in and of itself doesn't mean that the unborn deserve the legal right to life.

So again, I'm not saying the term "human being" does not apply but just saying that it does, even if one is correct, doesn't mean that the fetus deserves the legal right to life. So semantic arguments, in and of themselves, don't support either side of the debate.

So, you are doing the very thing the Nazis did with the Jews; you are using words to define particular persons out of existence or downgrade their human worth.

The unborn is either human or it is not human. You say it is human, do you not?

I'll ask again. Is it human? This is the issue.

When you (or another person/persons) place no or little value on one undeveloped human being, then you (or another person/persons) open the door to put no or low worth on other human beings. The undervaluing of human beings is EXACTLY what happened in these societies and cultures I pointed out. They stamp[ed] out the rights of human beings (whether that be a Jew, an African, a Hindu, or an undeveloped human) and give/gave those particular beings a lesser status to abuse and, in some cases, even terminate their life.

When you support the abortion argument, this is the thinking you are adopting, IMO.

If you admit (like so much scientific opinion does) that human life starts at conception, and then discriminate against the right of that being to live, what makes it 'wrong' to do so with other human beings? You are basing the right to life on the development of the human being (if you regard the nature of the being as a human at conception). If you are going to base the right to life on development (or under development), then surely you could justify that a young girl (who does not have reproductory organs as developed as a teenager or woman) should not have the same rights to life that these other two have. This is what you are doing in the case of the unborn. (My argument is based on the SLED argument)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-iJQ92BwTU

Size - does being larger than another person/human give you more rights than another person/human? Should it?
Level of Development - is a 6-year-old girl less human than a 13-year-old or a 20-year-old woman because her reproductory tract is less developed.
Do more intelligent people - more developed brains - have the right to eliminate the lesser intelligent (where does it end)? You (when you support or give credence to this pro-choice view) condone this with the unborn - eliminate it if you want to because it is less developed. YOU stand against providing this underdeveloped human being fundamental human rights to life.
Environment - does a change of location (inside as opposed to outside the womb) make you more human?
Dependency - is a baby less human than an adult because it is more dependent on another being for its existence?

Now apply the SLED example philosophically to Hitler's Germany.

Size - the majority (larger population by size in opinion)outweighed the Jews in determining their outcome.
Level of Development - Hitler thought the Jew was a lesser form of life than the Arian race.
Environment - Nazi Germany did not recognize the Jew as having the same rights as people did who lived in other cultures.
Dependency - the Jews were dependent on the greater society for their very lives. Those in control determined the outcome for the Jew.

Let's see what embryology texts say about when a human life starts (I have included many quotes to show your bias)

But none of this proves that a human fetus should have the legal right to life.

So you are saying that not all innocent (not guilty of a crime) human beings have an equal right to live. Or are you saying that the unborn is guilty of the crime of size, level of development, environment, or dependency - SLED.

Logical and legal can be two different things. Who makes the rules and are they rational? Science texts broadly agree that the unborn is a unique human being. Science is not involved in morality, to my knowledge. It tests a hypothesis and validates those conclusions via repeatability and observation.

And btw, you may not have noticed this, but in either abortion thread I have NEVER argued that the fetus does not deserve the right to life or that abortion should not be outlawed.

Not true, IMO. In your devil's advocacy, you are taking a position that is in favor of recognizing the unborn as less than human (disposable and devalued) and less than a person by arguing against the pro-life stance. This position, or pure silence on the issue of it being wrong, does favor a side.

As I've said, BOTH sides of the debate cannot support their positions as they are ultimately based on subjective criteria. So I don't argue that abortion should be legal as I have no way of supporting that position.

I disagree. Only one side of the debate cannot support its position, IMO - pro-choice.

Legal right???

So intrinsic value, for you, does not equate a legal right to life.

Correct. I think a fertilized egg has intrinsic value for if they did not exist, then humans would not exist. But then I also think that unfertilized eggs have intrinsic value for the same reason. If a woman never produced any eggs, mankind would not exist. But I don't think that unfertilized eggs deserve legal protection and pretty much everyone agrees with me about that. So no, I don't think that everything that has intrinsic value has a legal right to life.

Are fertilized human eggs unique, individual human beings? Science text says yes. What say you?
Are unfertilized human eggs unique separate, individual human beings? Science says yes. What say you?

As for the rest of this hypothetical junk, I reject it. We are arguing for what is the case, not what it might be hypothetically, like a woman never producing any eggs and humanity not existing. Women do produce eggs and humanity does exist.

So no, I don't think that everything that has intrinsic value has a legal right to life.

We are not arguing over "everything" having intrinsic value but over innocent human beings - human beings that have committed no crime but to exist and depend on others defending them.

Are these fertilized eggs human beings?

If so, you argue that some human beings do not have the same right to life that other human beings do. If you were a human being discriminated against (through no crime that you had committed, but for your right to exist) because someone else didn't like you or devalued you, and wanted to put you to death, would you still hold the same opinion? I doubt it.

Just because someone can legislate a person's existence out of existence or exploit them to the fullest does not make that 'right' IF human beings have intrinsic value and the unborn is a human being. The consensus on whether it is human does not favor your position. If an intrinsic human value is going to be legislated, then you can only hope they don't start with you as missing the standard.

If you are going to engage in slippery slope arguments, then what about the intrinsic value of unfertilized eggs? If we did outlaw abortion, wouldn't you be concerned about the fact that we allow unfertilized eggs to die during a woman's monthly cycle? If we don't value unfertilized eggs, then what's next?

How is it a slippery slope? You say that particular human beings (unborn) do not have the same right to life that you do. That right to life has been legislated out of existence if a woman chooses to exercise it. The same was done to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Their lives were exercised out of existence by the gatekeepers of that society also.

By not standing up for the right of the unborn it is you who creates the slippery slope, in my opinion.

The difference between an unfertilized egg and a fertilized one is that the fertilized egg is a distinct, human being.

The difference between a fertilized egg dying and choosing to put it to death is the difference between a biological function and a choice to murder another human being.

I am not making my case for an unfertilized human egg. I am making my case for a unique, individual human being.

What makes us as humans valuable?
Do you have value and the right to life?
What makes you different (in nature) now than the unborn you once were?

SLED - size, level of development, environment, dependency.

I, as well as a significant number of scientific texts (possibly most), group the unborn as a human being. You seem to be out in left field, once again. Now you are doing the same with personhood.

I don't disagree with the text. But the texts did not say that abortion should be illegal.

You bring into the equation whether science should be making moral choices. Should science determine right and wrong or should science stick to the facts - what is (as opposed to what should be), via repeatable and observable facts.

Since you disagree with my definition (not true), then you must believe that killing an innocent human being is alright/legal and you are free to do so because it is not murder.

I didn't disagree with the definition. My point is that applying a certain word to something, even if applied correctly, does not mean that it should have the legal right to life.

Is the fertilized human egg, the unborn, a unique human being?
Is it living?
If it is human, what makes it less valuable than you, another human being?

And speaking of definition, abortion is not, by definition, murder. Murder is defined as an unlawful killing and abortion is not unlawful. And of course that does not mean that abortion should not be outlawed because, as I said, applying a term does not automatically mean that abortion should or should not be legal.

Under unique circumstances, I agree, such as when the woman's life is at risk and her death would mean the end of the unborn also. Other than this, what makes a woman choosing to kill an unborn human being any different than you or I in deciding to kill an innocent human being (one who has not committed a crime), unjustly.

So I'm not disagreeing with the terms. I'm saying that the terms, in and of themselves, do not equate an argument for or against abortion. So you need to do more than just say "human being" to make a supported argument that abortion should be illegal.

But you do disagree with the terms. You made a big song and dance over the terms in your first statement of this post.

The terms are whether the unborn fertilized being inside the womb is human or not. If it is human, then why does it not have basic intrinsic human worth like you or I do?
That is the slippery slope - once you go down this road, you open the door for discrimination against other human beings, as was done in those other societies I listed earlier.

Did I make a valid argument - Is killing unborn human beings something that should be illegal (except in the case of the health of the mother that would result in the death of the unborn anyway)?

I made the issue around whether the unborn is a human being or not, and when it becomes human.

Peter

---------- Post added at 04:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:24 PM ----------

You might have a different line where you think the law should offer restrictions but you can't really justify it any better than those who think the restrictions should apply at third trimester. You can use a different argument but ultimately the argument will be rooted in subjectivity.

Objectively, does a new life begin at conception?
Objectively, is that new life a human being?

If so, then neither the first or third trimesters should be an excuse to take the human life.

So subjectively setting restrictions at the third trimester is not really different than setting it at conception.

Again, restricting an argument to size (first as opposed to the third trimester) and level of development should not matter in determining whether a human being should live or die. This is what is being done with the unborn.

This kind of logic that size or level of development matters is faulty because you only have to apply it (like I did in my last post) to other human beings who are smaller or less developed and treat them as you do the unborn by choosing whether they live or die.

What makes their natures (a six-year-old or 13-year-old girl as opposed to a 20-year-old woman) any less human in nature than that of the unborn?

***

On a side note, in my last post, I argue that it is you who is creating a fallacious slippery slope. My argument was that when one group of human beings is devalued it leaves reason to do so to other groups of human beings. If there is no intrinsic value in all groups of human beings, then why can't killing one group be done? If you are going to say that the unborn human being is of lesser value than a born human being, then why can't you make that distinction with other groups of human beings? There is a rational argument to support my view - the devaluing of groups of people by different regimes and beliefs around the world has led to mass killings (murder), or discrimination, or both.

Slippery slope - "that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question."

Peter

---------- Post added at 05:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:59 PM ----------

[1]When it comes to debates regarding abortion, there often seems to be a disagreement on what term to use when referring to the unborn.

Pro-choicers tend to call it a "fetus" and pro-lifers often use the term "baby" or "child". And I've seen arguments flowing both ways of accusing the other of intentionally using the term which will help their viewpoint instead of using the most objectively correct term.

[2] And I think a pretty simple way to determine whether one is accurately using the term in regards to the debate is to look how they use the term outside of the abortion debate.

[3] So let's say someone is throwing a party and one of the guests says "I'm brining my baby along". What is clearly being communicated in this instance is that the person is bringing an infant, not a fetus. If the guest was pregnant and brining the fetus that resides in her womb with her, she would not say she is bringing her baby along and if she did say that, the host would be expecting her to bring along an infant as opposed to just being pregnant.

So it seems pretty clear that the pro-lifers are altering the definition of the word "baby' when the use the term to communicate a fetus in the abortion debate and therefore are not using the term for accurate communication but to equivocate the fetus and a born child.

[1] How about a human being, for that is what the unborn is. THAT is the heart of the issue. That and whether human beings have intrinsic value. If not, then what makes your life any more valuable than that of the unborn or anything else?

[2] So I see you as saying that our inner beliefs should reflect or demonstrate our outer words.

[3] But that does not change the nature of the being in either circumstance, before birth as opposed to after birth. We, as pro-lifers are not changing the being from human to some other form of life or devaluing it just because it is not born yet. YOU are devaluing it based on SLED (see video).

Abortion is the biggest holocaust in the history of the world to date.

http://www.worldometers.info/abortions/
http://www.numberofabortions.com/

Peter

[Belthazor]

You didn't ask me why it should be this way. You asked me why pro-choices have different standards for early-term and late-term pregnancies and I gave you a very accurate answer. You have in no way shown that it's inaccurate.

And I appreciate your honesty. I merely wanted to point out, that it is an arbitrary standard, that's all.

---------- Post added at 05:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:11 PM ----------

What doctor? And besides that, you did not rebut my question when you asked what conception means.

again, this doctor:

"Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., P.h.D. was the first scientist to succeed at in vitro fertilization:
“The zygote is human life….there is one fact that no one can deny; Human beings begin at conception.”

Doctor of the first human conceived outside of a human womb.
Your insistence that this is not when life begins is very confusing to me (I was taught this in jr high, but that was some time ago...). It certainly does not begin in the third trimester???

How about dictionary.com:

noun
1.
the act of conceiving; the state of being conceived.
2.
fertilization; inception of pregnancy.
5.
origination; beginning:

The beginning of pregnancy. Which is the beginning of a baby. Seems clear enough.

This is how the term is commonly used (when discussing biology) For instance, what does Princeton have to say:

https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/a...yoquotes2.html
"At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun...."

Also seems quite clear...
http://www.lifenews.com/2015/01/08/4...at-conception/

This (admittedly pro life site) links articles from Nature Mag, Nat'l Institute of Health, US Health and Human Serv and many other reputable sources.

---------- Post added at 05:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:30 PM ----------

I did not say that nature made a conscious choice. But I am saying that if one holds that it's a human being at the moment that sperm meets egg, they should be very upset that half of all embryos are killed by this natural process. And yet, I've never heard anyone ever express remorse over this. So I conclude that no one is too concerned about this which shows that people are not that invested in the life of the fetus at the moment that egg meets sperm. I mean are you particularly bothered that half of all human embryos die before birth?

I can believe that you weren't bothered by this before because you were unaware of this fact (I just learned it recently myself). But now that you do know, do you have a problem with this?

Of course it bothers me! Nature, by human standards is very uncaring and brutal. Watch a lion kill an antelope. It's absolutely savage (and unfortunately how earth is set up. life kills other life to stay alive). But this is all out of my control. The legality of a mother CHOOSING to pay someone to abort (kill) her fetus (unborn child) child I can have some effect on (though admittedly, not much).

But nature, as you admit, doesn't "choose" for these embryos to die, so it really doesn't equate to abortion.

The solution to this issue is contraception. You can't kill something that was never alive. If the effort put forth from the pro life and pro choice were put to this goal, we might have some real progress on the issue instead of just arguments and death.

[mican333]

And I appreciate your honesty. I merely wanted to point out, that it is an arbitrary standard, that's all.

No, it's not an arbitrary standard. "Arbitrary" means "random" so an arbitrary standard on when a fetus should be entitled to legal rights of some kind would be one that is more or less random. But a standard that gives more rights the closer the fetus comes to viability is not random at all and can be logically explained.

again, this doctor:

"Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., P.h.D. was the first scientist to succeed at in vitro fertilization:
“The zygote is human life….there is one fact that no one can deny; Human beings begin at conception.”

Doctor of the first human conceived outside of a human womb.
Your insistence that this is not when life begins is very confusing to me

You are definitely confused because I never argued that that is not when life begins.

I've never argued that a fetus with human DNA is not "human" and I never argued that it's not a "life". So now I believe that we have come to an understanding. If we define a "human life" as "that which is alive and has human DNA is a human life", then a human fetus is a human life.

But I don't see how this solves the abortion controversy. As I've argued, it cannot be resolved as both sides ultimately have to resort to subjective standards to argue their side.

[Belthazor]

You are definitely confused because I never argued that that is not when life begins.

Hmmm, maybe we are making progress

If a human life begins at conception, there are current laws to protect it.

---------- Post added at 07:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:05 PM ----------

If we define a "human life" as "that which is alive and has human DNA is a human life", then a human fetus is a human life.

I have no idea why ANYONE would define a human in this way???????????

[mican333]

Hmmm, maybe we are making progress

If a human life begins at conception, there are current laws to protect it.

As far as I can tell, there are no laws protecting human life until it reaches at least the second trimester (I don't know exactly when the legal restrictions start).

I have no idea why ANYONE would define a human in this way???????????

It's about as technically accurate as I can conceive. "human life" is something that is human (so it has human DNA) and is alive.

But I'm not married to this definition but we do need a consistent and unchanging definition. So I'll let you provide the definition of "human life". As long as it seems reasonable, I'll likely go with whatever you come up with.


================================================== =============

So, you are doing the very thing the Nazis did with the Jews; you are using words to define particular persons out of existence or downgrade their human worth.

False equivalency.

The unborn is either human or it is not human. You say it is human, do you not?

I'll ask again. Is it human? This is the issue.

If by "human" you mean does it have human DNA, then yes, it is human. If you mean something else by "human", you will need to explain your definition of the word.

If you admit (like so much scientific opinion does) that human life starts at conception, and then discriminate against the right of that being to live, what makes it 'wrong' to do so with other human beings? You are basing the right to life on the development of the human being (if you regard the nature of the being as a human at conception). If you are going to base the right to life on development (or under development), then surely you could justify that a young girl (who does not have reproductory organs as developed as a teenager or woman) should not have the same rights to life that these other two have. This is what you are doing in the case of the unborn.

The pro-choice position is not based on development but whether it's inside or outside of the mother. So going by that, one cannot justify holding a different position on a young girl or a woman. They are both outside of their mother's body.

Size - does being larger than another person/human give you more rights than another person/human? Should it?
Level of Development - is a 6-year-old girl less human than a 13-year-old or a 20-year-old woman because her reproductory tract is less developed.
Do more intelligent people - more developed brains - have the right to eliminate the lesser intelligent (where does it end)? You (when you support or give credence to this pro-choice view) condone this with the unborn - eliminate it if you want to because it is less developed. YOU stand against providing this underdeveloped human being fundamental human rights to life.
Environment - does a change of location (inside as opposed to outside the womb) make you more human?
Dependency - is a baby less human than an adult because it is more dependent on another being for its existence?


Now apply the SLED example philosophically to Hitler's Germany.

Size - the majority (larger population by size in opinion)outweighed the Jews in determining their outcome.
Level of Development - Hitler thought the Jew was a lesser form of life than the Arian race.
Environment - Nazi Germany did not recognize the Jew as having the same rights as people did who lived in other cultures.
Dependency - the Jews were dependent on the greater society for their very lives. Those in control determined the outcome for the Jew.

False equivalency. The issues with the fetus are due to the natural state of the fetus. The state of the Jews in Nazi Germany was due to the state being imposed upon them by the choices of other people.

This very significant difference renders the comparison invalid.

So you are saying that not all innocent (not guilty of a crime) human beings have an equal right to live. Or are you saying that the unborn is guilty of the crime of size, level of development, environment, or dependency

Assuming that you are including the unborn under the term human beings, I will say that I can observe that unborn humans do not have a legal right to life (as in there is no legal principle giving them that right).

BTW, I've not argued that abortion should be legal here. My position is that neither side can support their position without resorting to subjective reasoning.

Not true, IMO. In your devil's advocacy, you are taking a position that is in favor of recognizing the unborn as less than human (disposable and devalued) and less than a person by arguing against the pro-life stance. This position, or pure silence on the issue of it being wrong, does favor a side.

Wrong. When I argue that abortion should be legal and attempt to support that argument, THEN I've taken the other side.

Just telling you that your argument is ultimately subjective does not mean that the pro-choice side makes a better argument than the pro-life side. I hold that BOTH sides are subjective and therefore neither are superior than the other.

The only reason I'm debating you on this is because you have chose to challenge my reasoning. If a pro-choicer attacked my position and attempted to argue that the pro-choice position is based on something other than opinion, then I'd be debating him.

I disagree. Only one side of the debate cannot support its position, IMO - pro-choice.

IMO means "In my opinion". Your opinion is noted. But I'm interested in supported arguments.

Are fertilized human eggs unique, individual human beings? Science text says yes. What say you?
Are unfertilized human eggs unique separate, individual human beings? Science says yes. What say you?

As for the rest of this hypothetical junk, I reject it. We are arguing for what is the case, not what it might be hypothetically, like a woman never producing any eggs and humanity not existing. Women do produce eggs and humanity does exist.

And those eggs have intrinsic value BEFORE they are fertilized. Again, without those pre-fertilized eggs the human race would not exist.

We are not arguing over "everything" having intrinsic value but over innocent human beings - human beings that have committed no crime but to exist and depend on others defending them.

Are these fertilized eggs human beings?

If so, you argue that some human beings do not have the same right to life that other human beings do. If you were a human being discriminated against (through no crime that you had committed, but for your right to exist) because someone else didn't like you or devalued you, and wanted to put you to death, would you still hold the same opinion? I doubt it.

But then I acknowledge the difference between the born and the unborn. And while pro-choicers do generally think that the unborn deserve the legal right to life, I don't think they hold that the born and unborn are equal.

Let me present a scenario. Three women who have just conceived a human being each hold a morning after pill in their hands. Another woman has a newborn baby in her hands and a cup of poison. The woman with the newborn says that she will kill her baby unless the three pregnant women take their morning after pills which will kill all three fetuses inside them. It's your choice on whether the three women take the pills and end their pregnancy or the woman with the newborn kills her baby with the poison. Which do you choose?

Obviously, if all four "human beings" have equal value, the clear choice is to have the mother kill her newborn and let the three other women carry their pregnancies to term (even if one of the pregnancies goes wrong, the other two will give birth). So would you let the newborn die to save the other three fetuses? If it's true that all human beings have equal value, you'd have to. And yet I'm guessing that almost all pro-lifers (I won't speak for you) would save the newborn over the three fetuses. And that's because it's not generally agreed that these human beings have equal value.

The difference between a fertilized egg dying and choosing to put it to death is the difference between a biological function and a choice to murder another human being.

But if our concern is for its life as opposed to how it dies, then whether it dies by natural causes or is killed by the hands of another makes little difference.

A father who loses his daughter to a disease or to a killer will be heart-broken either way. Sure, death by killer is worse on some level but the killer is not the primary source of the tragedy - it's the death itself that is the most horrible thing about it.

You bring into the equation whether science should be making moral choices. Should science determine right and wrong or should science stick to the facts - what is (as opposed to what should be), via repeatable and observable facts.

Now here is where I agree with you. Science does not make a moral choice and therefore no scientific fact, by itself, can generate a moral argument for or against legalized abortion. So you just presenting a scientific fact does not equate an argument against abortion.

Under unique circumstances, I agree, such as when the woman's life is at risk and her death would mean the end of the unborn also. Other than this, what makes a woman choosing to kill an unborn human being any different than you or I in deciding to kill an innocent human being (one who has not committed a crime), unjustly.

You tell me. You are the one who is making an argument about whether abortion should or should not be illegal. Remember, I'm not actually taking a side and therefore have no responsibility to tell you why I think abortion should or should not be illegal.

But you do disagree with the terms. You made a big song and dance over the terms in your first statement of this post.

The terms are whether the unborn fertilized being inside the womb is human or not. If it is human, then why does it not have basic intrinsic human worth like you or I do?

In a legal sense, it's because there is a broad moral opinion that the unborn should not have the legal right to life

That is the slippery slope - once you go down this road, you open the door for discrimination against other human beings, as was done in those other societies I listed earlier.

Those those other societies first legalized abortion and then used the same philosophical/legal basis they used to legalize abortion to create laws against certain born humans? If that's your assertion, please support it.

If you are just saying that A will lead to B because you can find some kind of similarity between the two, then you are indeed engaging in the slippery slope fallacy.

Objectively, does a new life begin at conception?
Objectively, is that new life a human being?

If so, then neither the first or third trimesters should be an excuse to take the human life.

First off, whether it's called a "human being" is a semantic issue and therefore is not objective (people call things what they choose to call things).

And the fact that your conclusion is a moral statement (contains the word "should") and therefore is subjective.

This kind of logic that size or level of development matters is faulty because you only have to apply it (like I did in my last post) to other human beings who are smaller or less developed and treat them as you do the unborn by choosing whether they live or die.

What makes their natures (a six-year-old or 13-year-old girl as opposed to a 20-year-old woman) any less human in nature than that of the unborn?

Since no one has argued that a younger child is any less of a human being than an adult, nor does the pro-choice position necessitate this position, your question is based on a false premise.

On a side note, in my last post, I argue that it is you who is creating a fallacious slippery slope. My argument was that when one group of human beings is devalued it leaves reason to do so to other groups of human beings.

And when you support this position, I'll respond to it.

If you are going to say that the unborn human being is of lesser value than a born human being, then why can't you make that distinction with other groups of human beings?

One can devalue other human beings without first devaluing the unborn. You have not supported that legalized abortion increases the likelihood of people putting less value of other born human beings. You just claimed it without providing support.

There is a rational argument to support my view - the devaluing of groups of people by different regimes and beliefs around the world has led to mass killings (murder), or discrimination, or both.

Devaluing a group of people has lead to the killing of those particular people. The devaluing of Jews by the Nazis lead to the Holocaust. But you have NOT shown that not valuing the unborn has EVER lead to the devaluing of a certain group of born people. Seriously, are you arguing that in Germany abortion was legal and then it was outlawed and the devaluing of unborn human lives gave people license to devalue Jews and that lead to the Holocaust? If so, please support this assertion (or show an example of a different atrocity that started like that). If not, then you have provided no evidence that not valuing the unborn the same as the born will lead to devaluing certain groups of born humans.

Slippery slope - "that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question."

Right. You've presented no rational argument or demonstrable mechanism that supports that abortion will, or ever has, lead to the killing of any group of born humans.

[1] How about a human being, for that is what the unborn is. THAT is the heart of the issue. That and whether human beings have intrinsic value. If not, then what makes your life any more valuable than that of the unborn or anything else?

[2] So I see you as saying that our inner beliefs should reflect or demonstrate our outer words.

[3] But that does not change the nature of the being in either circumstance, before birth as opposed to after birth. We, as pro-lifers are not changing the being from human to some other form of life or devaluing it just because it is not born yet.

But then you have not supported the the unborn are of a greater value than the born. You are only opining that it's of equal value (and I'm guessing my three pregnant women vs a born baby would reveal that it's not entirely equal) and therefore your argument is subjective.

If it's your OPINION that the born and unborn are of equal value, fair enough. But that's still a subjective notion. And likewise the pro-choice notion that the born deserve greater protection than the unborn is a subjective notion.

[PGA2]

There is a lot to unpack here, and you are asking for a validation of specific comparisons. I will get back to you in a couple of days.

Peter

[PGA2]

So, you are doing the very thing the Nazis did with the Jews; you are using words to define particular persons out of existence or downgrade their human worth.
False equivalency.

The unborn is either a human, or it is not a human. You say it is human, do you not?

I'll ask again. Is it human? This is the issue.

If by "human" you mean does it have human DNA, then yes, it is human. If you mean something else by "human", you will need to explain your definition of the word.

What are you suggesting I mean by the word human?

If you are going to treat one human different than another human in ending its life, by declassifying its human worth, you open the door to do so with any human being.

Yes, human DNA from a male and female human combine to create a separate, individual, human being. I'm puzzled over what is so difficult to understand about this.

Everything necessary and everything that makes you 'you' was present at conception, just not developed. If someone were to kill you at conception or in the first or third trimester, that person would be killing you.

When you (or another person/persons) place no or little value on one undeveloped human being, then you (or another person/persons) open the door to put no or low worth on other human beings.
slippery slope fallacy.

"The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...ery-slope.html

It does follow that if you place little value on one human being because you don't see them quite as human as another person you are discriminating against that human, making them less than what they are. Devaluing is what Hitler did to the Jews. He devalued them, which I will give evidence for later in my response to your post. It is what Apartheid did to the person of color. It is what you (here) and others are doing to the unborn. You think that just because the law makes it legal that it becomes right.

The undervaluing of human beings is EXACTLY what happened in these societies and cultures I pointed out. They stamp[ed] out the rights of human beings (whether that be a Jew, an African, a Hindu, or an undeveloped human) and give/gave those particular beings a lesser status to abuse and, in some cases, even terminate their life.

And did ANY of these atrocities start with legalizing abortion? If so, please support this.

Funny you ask. It started with devaluing human life, which led to legalizing the classification of some people as "sub-human" or not of equal value. Once a life is devalued, it creates a culture to permit atrocities and acts of evil against the human group.

Here are two links to show comparisons:

"In 1936
The German Supreme Court refused to recognize Jews living in Germany as legal "persons". From that point on they had no rights or protection under the German Constitution. Shortly thereafter the Nazis began their "final Solution" - putting over 6,000,000 Jews to death.

Jews are "sub-human"
"The sub-human, that biologically seemingly complete creation of nature with hands, feet and a kind of brain, with eyes and mouth, is nevertheless a completely different, dreadful creature. He is only a rough copy of a human being, with human-like facial traits but nonetheless morally and mentally lower than an animal... For all that bare a human face are not equal. (Pamphlet published by the Race Settlement Main Office, Germany, 1942)

Jews are "parasites"
"The Jew was always only a parasite in the body of other peoples." (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 419.)"

http://www.abortionfacts.com/literat...dden-holocaust

http://nebula.wsimg.com/a7cfbde56454...&alloworigin=1

Another site:

"1. Depersonalization of the victims.
Germany did not simply awaken one day to find its citizenry acquiescent to a genocidal culture. Many years of treating certain groups as sub-human or not human prepared the normal German to view Slavs, Jews and others as life not worthy of life."

"Below is a list of words and phrases used in the “transformation of nomenclature for the unborn.”
The unborn has been designated as “protoplasmic rubbish,” “a gobbet of meat protruding from a human womb” (Philip Wylie); “a child-to-be” (Glanville Williams); “the fetal-placental unit” (A. I. Csapo); “gametic materials,” “fallopian and uterine cell matter” (Joseph Fletcher); “a part of the mother” (Oliver Wendell Holmes); or “a part of the mother’s body” (Thomas Szasz); “unwanted fetal tissue” (Ellen Frankfort); “the products of pregnancy” or “the product of conception” (HEW); “sub-human non-personhood” (F. Raymond Marks); “child Who-Might-Have-Been” (James Kidd); “so much garbage” (Peter Stanley)…”a collection of cells” (Malcolm Potts)…”potential life” (Mr. Justice Blackmun)…and “a non-viable fetus ex-utero” by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (p. 196, 197)"

http://theaquilareport.com/parallels...ocaust-part-1/

Peter

---------- Post added at 11:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:56 PM ----------

@ Mican:

When you support the abortion argument, this is the thinking you are adopting, IMO.

I'm not interested in your opinion. You need to support your arguments with evidence or retract them. I'm not interested in baseless arguments.

My opinion. What are you giving here? If you are playing both sides against each other, as you claim, then that is all you are giving - an opinion. Where are your facts? If all you have is a subjective opinion, then your opinion is no better than mine.

Please, support your own opinion!

If you admit (like so much scientific opinion does) that human life starts at conception, and then discriminate against the right of that being to live, what makes it 'wrong' to do so with other human beings? You are basing the right to life on the development of the human being (if you regard the nature of the being as a human at conception). If you are going to base the right to life on development (or under development), then surely you could justify that a young girl (who does not have reproductory organs as developed as a teenager or woman) should not have the same rights to life that these other two have. This is what you are doing in the case of the unborn.

Well, young people don't have all of the rights of an adult. Young people can't legally drive, drink alcohol, vote, or join the military and can have their freedoms legally curtailed by their parents (such as grounding). So even after being born, the gaining of rights does continue as one develops. But there is nothing in the pro-choice viewpoint that allows a born baby to be denied the right to life.

On this analogy, are these young people less valuable than you as a human being then? You protect them outside of the womb, guiding them until they can make responsible decisions for themselves, but inside the womb, you treat them like a piece of garbage. In fact, once born these young people are guarded and protected with a level of protection that most adults do not experience, while they develop the traits necessary to cope with life, but inside of the womb you dismiss their right to develop these same traits to cope.

But there is nothing in the pro-choice viewpoint that allows a born baby to be denied the right to life.

But there is inside the womb. Why is this? Why is the RIGHT to life taken away?

Size - does being larger than another person/human give you more rights than another person/human? Should it?
Level of Development - is a 6-year-old girl less human than a 13-year-old or a 20-year-old woman because her reproductory tract is less developed.
Do more intelligent people - more developed brains - have the right to eliminate the lesser intelligent (where does it end)? You (when you support or give credence to this pro-choice view) condone this with the unborn - eliminate it if you want to because it is less developed. YOU stand against providing this underdeveloped human being fundamental human rights to life.
Environment - does a change of location (inside as opposed to outside the womb) make you more human?
Dependency - is a baby less human than an adult because it is more dependent on another being for its existence?

Now apply the SLED example philosophically to Hitler's Germany.

Size - the majority (larger population by size in opinion)outweighed the Jews in determining their outcome.
Level of Development - Hitler thought the Jew was a lesser form of life than the Arian race.
Environment - Nazi Germany did not recognize the Jew as having the same rights as people did who lived in other cultures.
Dependency - the Jews were dependent on the greater society for their very lives. Those in control determined the outcome for the Jew.

False equivalency. The issues with the fetus are due to the natural state of the fetus. The state of the Jews in Nazi Germany was due to the state being imposed upon them by external forces. This very significant difference renders the comparison invalid.

No, not a false equivalency; it is an analogy. It is comparing something to something else. Because something is small in number (the Jews) or small in size (the unborn) and powerless in voicing their opinions, these groups are exploited to the point of the taking of their lives.

So you are saying that not all innocent (not guilty of a crime) human beings have an equal right to live. Or are you saying that the unborn is guilty of the crime of size, level of development, environment, or dependency

Assuming that you are including the unborn under the term human beings, I will say that I can observe that unborn humans do not have a legal right to life (as in there is no legal principle giving them that right).

BTW, I've not argued that abortion should be legal here. My position is that neither side can support their position without resorting to subjective reasoning.

Not true, IMO. In your devil's advocacy, you are taking a position that is in favor of recognizing the unborn as less than human (disposable and devalued) and less than a person by arguing against the pro-life stance. This position, or pure silence on the issue of it being wrong, does favor a side.

Wrong. When I argue that abortion should be legal and attempt to support that argument, THEN I've taken the other side.

You do that when you defend one position against another - you side with the position to support, even if it is just as devil's advocate, which I doubt.

Just telling you that your argument is ultimately subjective does not mean that the pro-choice side makes a better argument than the pro-life side. I hold that BOTH sides are subjective and therefore neither are superior than the other.

The only reason I'm debating you on this is because you have chose to challenge my reasoning. If a pro-choicer attacked my position and attempted to argue that the pro-choice position is based on something other than opinion, then I'd be debating him.

You reason that neither side is BETTER than the other since they are both subjective views. I am trying to establish that these two opposing views are not equally valid if in any way the human is valuable. By not defending the unborn human life you condone the taking of it. Once you open the door to justify the taking of one innocent human life, you open the door to do so with other innocent human lives.

You have expressed that you do not see the unborn as having the same value (different legal status) as those who are born since you continually oppose my defense of the unborn. And, in my opinion, based on your arguments, your playing devil's advocate is cowardly, since that is your claim. It means you do not have the conviction to stand for what you believe, your inner conviction. But I also feel that what someone expresses with outward words usually reflects the heart issue - what they believe deep down.

I disagree. Only one side of the debate cannot support its position, IMO - pro-choice.

Then support the pro-life side with something that is not rooted in opinion.

I will dedicate a post to doing so.

Peter

---------- Post added November 23rd, 2017 at 12:18 AM ---------- Previous post was November 22nd, 2017 at 11:20 PM ----------

The difference between a fertilized egg dying and choosing to put it to death is the difference between a biological function and a choice to murder another human being.

[1] But if our concern is for its life as opposed to how it dies, then whether it dies by natural causes or is killed by the hands of another makes no difference.

A father who loses his daughter to a disease or to a killer will be heart-broken either way. Sure, death by killer is worse on some level but the killer is not the primary source of the tragedy - it's the death itself that is the most horrible thing about it.

It does make a difference. If you murder another human being you are tried for murder. If that human being dies of natural causes there is no fault attributed to you.

Granted, a father will grieve in either situation, but a killer will hopefully be brought to justice.

You bring into the equation whether science should be making moral choices. Should science determine right and wrong or should science stick to the facts - what is (as opposed to what should be), via repeatable and observable facts.

Now here is where I agree with you. Science does not make a moral choice and therefore no scientific fact, by itself, can generate a moral argument for or against legalized abortion. So you just presenting a scientific fact does not equate an argument against abortion.

Hooray! We agree on something!

Under unique circumstances, I agree, such as when the woman's life is at risk and her death would mean the end of the unborn also. Other than this, what makes a woman choosing to kill an unborn human being any different than you or I in deciding to kill an innocent human being (one who has not committed a crime), unjustly.

You tell me. You are the one who is making an argument about whether abortion should or should not be illegal. Remember, I'm not actually taking a side and therefore have no responsibility to tell you why I think abortion should or should not be illegal.

I have always put forth the argument that it should be illegal except in the situation where a mother will lose her life, and that will also result in the death of the unborn.

BS. You are taking a side, even if it is just playing devil's advocate. You WOULD NOT be making an argument AGAINST my position if you had not chosen a side (for whatever reason you have to do so). To my mind, it seems to be a game you are playing. You claim you are trying to show that neither position (pro-life vs. pro-choice) is any better than the other (both subjective) except for the stance which you decide to defend.

But you do disagree with the terms. You made a big song and dance over the terms in your first statement of this post.

The terms are whether the unborn fertilized being inside the womb is human or not. If it is human, then why does it not have basic intrinsic human worth like you or I do?

In a legal sense, it's because there is a broad moral opinion that the unborn should not have the legal right to life

The legal outcome was a vote of seven to two. What about the legal rights of the unborn? Where did they go? They were stripped away with the decision. The most defenseless had their right to life taken from them on the decision of seven to two.

That is the slippery slope - once you go down this road, you open the door for discrimination against other human beings, as was done in those other societies I listed earlier.

Those those other societies first legalized abortion and then used the same philosophical/legal basis they used to legalize abortion to create laws against certain born humans? If that's your assertion, please support it.

If you are just saying that A will lead to B because you can find some kind of similarity between the two, then you are indeed engaging in the slippery slope fallacy.

I'm not saying this will lead to that. I'm saying it has. I'm presenting the argument that when you devalue human life, all these options are present; one life can be argued as no more valuable than any other.

Objectively, does a new life begin at conception?
Objectively, is that new life a human being?

If so, then neither the first or third trimesters should be an excuse to take the human life.

[1] First off, whether it's called a "human being" is a semantic issue and therefore is not objective (people call things what they choose to call things).

[2] And the fact that your conclusion is a moral statement (contains the word "should") and therefore is subjective.

[1] A human being - a being that is human. It either is a human being or some other kind of being.
Are you trying to dehumanize it by semantics?

Its DNA is human, yes.

"The pro-life case for human equality is grounded in the substance view of human persons. Substances are living organisms that maintain their identity through time, while property things, such as cars and machinery, do not....As a substance develops, it does not become more of its kind but matures according to its kind. It remains what it is from the moment it begins to exist." Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life, p. 50.

[A car] has "no internal (or essence) that orders its development and grounds its identity through change." p. 50.

You were 'you' at two, twenty-two, and forty-two.

[2] So what you are saying is morality = subjectivity. How do you get morality from two different subjective opinions? Let me boil it down for you; you force your view on the other or you are forced to adopt the other's view.

Subjectivity is not the case regarding morality if there is an objective being who has revealed what is right and good. We have an objective stance when we agree with such a being. If this is not the case (no objective being), then your opinion is no better than any other (just enforced if you have the means to do so), so what are you saying with your moral outrage?

"Might makes right."

Is that what you believe?

This kind of logic that size or level of development matters is faulty because you only have to apply it (like I did in my last post) to other human beings who are smaller or less developed and treat them as you do the unborn by choosing whether they live or die.

What makes their natures (a six-year-old or 13-year-old girl as opposed to a 20-year-old woman) any less human in nature than that of the unborn?

Since no one has argued that a younger child is any less of a human being than an adult, nor does the pro-choice position necessitate this position, your question is based on a false premise.

You are arguing that the unborn is less of a human than the young child, that it does not have the same value for it (the unborn) and can be killed on the whim of the woman, but not so after birth. That is a value distinction. Can you not see this? You even gave a scenario regarding value placed on the unborn versus newborn to that effect with the four women.

How is my question a false premise? If you are going to devalue a human being because of its size, or its level of development, or is an environment, or its dependency (since these are the differences between an unborn human and an adult human), then you are making the argument of its value based on one of these qualities.

On a side note, in my last post, I argue that it is you who is creating a fallacious slippery slope. My argument was that when one group of human beings is devalued it leaves reason to do so to other groups of human beings.

And when you support this position, I'll respond to it.

I have supported my position all along.

If there is no intrinsic value in all groups of human beings, then why can't killing one group be done?

You have not shown that the pro-choice side removes the value of BORN human beings.

I didn't argue that it did remove the value of the born. It was not my purpose to show the value of the born removed by the pro-choice. I argue why it can't or shouldn't remove the value of the unborn by basing it on the born and the born's humanity. I argued that one group, the unborn, has its value removed, and if one group of human beings is expendable, then someone will find a way to devalue another group. I argue that if you are going to devalue the unborn, why can't you (justification for) devalue the newborn, who largely has the same attributes as the unborn, except for its location/environment.

Losing the value of a group of humans has led to the exploitation of that group through human history. I already cited some examples. If you want to argue that these are not valid then go ahead, but your claim that I supplied no examples is not true.

What is the difference between an unborn minutes before birth and minutes after birth - location/environment?
What is the difference in its level of development?
What is the difference in its size?
What is the difference in its dependency, other than inside the womb the woman is the sole caregiver?

Why is the newborn protected but the unborn is not? It is because the unborn human being has been devalued by society at large. Holywood, as a gatekeeper of our societies, is partly to blame for promoting these liberal, socialist views of humanity in everything it produces. Just look what it promotes on a daily basis on TV and at the movies; the worthlessness of human life, its pro stance for abortion.

If you are going to say that the unborn human being is of lesser value than a born human being, then why can't you make that distinction with other groups of human beings?

[QUOTE=mican333;556689] [1] One can devalue other human beings without first devaluing the unborn. [2] You have not supported that legalized abortion increases the likelihood of people putting less value of other born human beings. You just claimed it without providing support.

[1] This is true. I do not dispute it. BUT the unborn human has been devalued to the tune of 1.5 billion killed since Roe vs. Wade. That is the biggest mass murder in the history of the world regarding one group of humans - the unborn.

[2] My argument is that once one group of human beings it devalued it can lead to others being devalued. A human being loses their intrinsic value, which is the case with abortion, with the Jews in Nazi Germany, with the person of color in South Africa (and I lived there), with the Caste system in India, and one thousand and one other cases. Discriminated against one group over another as of lesser value as a human being is THE SAME PRINCIPLE in operation regardless of whether it is over a Jew, a Hindu, a black or person of color, or the unborn.

Why were any of these human beings allowed to be devalued? It was when the gatekeepers of the society, or the society at large, regarded the group of lesser human value than the other, the same thing you did with the born versus the unborn scenario.

There is a rational argument to support my view - the devaluing of groups of people by different regimes and beliefs around the world has led to mass killings (murder), or discrimination, or both.

[1]
Devaluing a group of people has lead to the killing of those people. The devaluing of Jews by the Nazis lead to the Holocaust. But you have NOT shown that not valuing the unborn has EVER lead to the devaluing of a certain group of born people. [2] Seriously, are you arguing that in Germany abortion was legal and then it was outlawed and the devaluing of unborn human lives gave people license to devalue Jews and that lead to the Holocaust? If so, please support this assertion. If not, then you have provided no evidence that not valuing the unborn the same as the born will lead to devaluing certain groups of born humans.

[1] You are doing it again. I am arguing that the unborn should be treated with the same worth and dignity that the born are. You keep turn the argument on its end. I'm not arguing for the born. The born are protected. I'm arguing that the difference between the born and unborn is the distinction of size, development, environment, and dependency. If you are going to kill the unborn then why can you not kill the born? The difference between the unborn and newborn is minimal along these four lines of argumentation.

Why should the unborn be devalued???

Once you start with one group of human beings as being less valuable than another, then you support the idea of devaluing other human beings.

That is why I continue to press you as to whether the unborn is a human being.

[2] No, what I am doing is shine light on the principle of being human and asking you what makes the unborn human being less valuable than the born human being. I am also arguing that once you devalue one group you open the door to make it acceptable to devalue another group.

Slippery slope - "that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question."

Right. You've presented no rational argument or demonstrable mechanism that supports that abortion will, or ever has, lead to the killing of any group of born humans.

You are not seeing the connection. Others do. I'm not arguing for the born but for the unborn. I'm comparing and contrasting the born with the unborn.

Peter

---------- Post added at 12:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:18 AM ----------

[1] How about a human being, for that is what the unborn is. THAT is the heart of the issue. That and whether human beings have intrinsic value. If not, then what makes your life any more valuable than that of the unborn or anything else?

[2] So I see you as saying that our inner beliefs should reflect or demonstrate our outer words.

[3] But that does not change the nature of the being in either circumstance, before birth as opposed to after birth. We, as pro-lifers are not changing the being from human to some other form of life or devaluing it just because it is not born yet.

[1a] But then you have not supported the the unborn are of a greater value than the born. [2a] You are only opining that it's of equal value (and I'm guessing my three pregnant women vs a born baby would reveal that it's not entirely equal) and therefore your argument is subjective.

[3a] If it's your OPINION that the born and unborn are of equal value, fair enough. But that's still a subjective notion. And likewise the pro-choice notion that the born deserve greater protection than the unborn is a subjective notion.

[1a] I have supported it. I have argued that the unborn is as human as the born. If you think it is less human, then support this belief.

Let me compare the two, abortion and the killing of six million Jews, and in total 11 million undesirables by the Nazis.

Here is one of many sites that compare the two in which the author had this to say:

"At the root of both scourges is a particular strain of evil, the most virulent that the devil possesses. It is the kind of evil that works to take away the humanity of human beings. It whispers in the ears of one group of people that a certain other group of people are something less than human, less worthy of life because of race or religion or physical ability or age. And once this is accomplished, once a group of people have been thoroughly dehumanized in the mind of their society, evil can run wild while the populace yawns."

http://jenniferfulwiler.com/2008/11/...t-comparisons/

***
Another site on the comparisons said this:

"Below is a list of words and phrases used in the “transformation of nomenclature for the unborn.”
The unborn has been designated as “protoplasmic rubbish,” “a gobbet of meat protruding from a human womb” (Philip Wylie); “a child-to-be” (Glanville Williams); “the fetal-placental unit” (A. I. Csapo); “gametic materials,” “fallopian and uterine cell matter” (Joseph Fletcher); “a part of the mother” (Oliver Wendell Holmes); or “a part of the mother’s body” (Thomas Szasz); “unwanted fetal tissue” (Ellen Frankfort); “the products of pregnancy” or “the product of conception” (HEW); “sub-human non-personhood” (F. Raymond Marks); “child Who-Might-Have-Been” (James Kidd); “so much garbage” (Peter Stanley)…”a collection of cells” (Malcolm Potts)…”potential life” (Mr. Justice Blackmun)…and “a non-viable fetus ex-utero” by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (p. 196, 197)"

http://theaquilareport.com/parallels...ocaust-part-1/

***

Here is another site that compares the likes of Margret Sanger (and her philosophy) and Planned Parenthood to Nazi "doctors of death" and their philosophical principles. I did not include many quotes:

" This portion of the Death Camps tour looks at the history of holocaust. By comparing Germany’s Nazi holocaust and America’s abortion holocaust you’ll see there is practically no difference between the mindset of holocaust then and now. As with slavery in early America, killing Jews in Nazi Germany, or killing babies in America today — just because something is legal does not make it right."

"Today, abortion is justified by claiming the killing of babies is “safe and legal.” Dr. Michael Jackson, an abortionist and clinic owner said, “I just go by what the courts say. I only do what’s legal.” These were the same justifications used by doctors who participated in the massacre of millions at Auschwitz. Zyklon-B, the poison gas used to kill the Jews, was seen as helping to alleviate suffering and permit “humane killing”.
At Nuremberg, numerous Nazi doctors and killers said they were innocent because they had broken no law. “The jurists in Berlin told us this was a legal matter,” testified Walter Schmidt, “quite legal.” According to an expert on Auschwitz, “The Nazis committed no crime at Auschwitz since no law or political order protected those who were condemned.”
In fact, the legality itself helped to distance the killers from the killing – if it was legally ordered or at least permitted, then the killing was someone else’s fault. At the trial held for nurses who injected infants and children with lethal substances, the heart of their defense of was that the killing was carried out in conformity of the existing laws. The defense claimed that “these people were only carrying out the laws of the land” and “the accused did not act wrongly because they were covered by law.”"

"The euphemisms used by Nazis and abortion advocates are eerily similar. Death camps were called “relocation centers” in Nazi Germany and Nazi Occupied Europe. Death camps are called “reproductive health centers” in modern America. The Jews were described as a “parasitic race” by Hitler, while the unwanted child is described “a mere parasite” by Planned Parenthood. The end result then was “termination” of the Jews and the end result now is “termination of pregnancy.”"

"In the Nazi death camps the victims were labeled “useless eaters,” “human ballast”, “a mentally dead person,” etc. Genetic counselors and physicians who referred for extermination were called, “protectors of the family.” Those sentenced to die were “life unworthy of life.” The killing was advocated for the “health of the people,” being described as “purely a healing treatment” and a “healing work”. The bodies of the murdered Auschwitz inmates were referred to as “garbage.” Jews were repeatedly referred to as a “disease,” for which extermination was the “cure” or “final solution.”"

"Note the commonality language between the Nazi positions and the claims of abortionists and today’s “pro-choice” supporters. In Nazi Germany, the killing of Jews was not against the law, the killing centers were “medical centers” that the killers were “doctors” and the killing was done in the name of promoting “health.” In pro-choice America, the killing of babies is not against the law, the killing is done at “medical clinics”, the killers are “doctors” and abortion is called a woman’s “health” issue.
In America’s death camps the victim is usually called a “fetus,” but they have also been called “unseen infections,” “a sexually transmitted disease” and “a cancerous growth”. Abortion supporters have stated that abortion is the “preferred treatment” for “unwanted pregnancy: the number two sexually transmitted disease” and “an aborted baby is just garbage.”"

"In 1943, Himmler referred to the killing of Jews as having “exterminated a germ,” and abortion advocate Natalie Shainess justifies abortion by claiming that the unwanted pregnancy is merely “an alien germ.”
Former Auschwitz physician Dr. Fritz Klein made the analogy between the massacre of Jews and “a good doctor” who “takes a scalpel and removes an appendix full of pus.” He went on to say, “The Jews are the pus-filled appendix in the body of Europe.” Similarly, abortion advocate Dr. Alan Guttmacher likened the destruction of the fetus to “operating on an appendix or removing a gangrenous bowel.”
Under the Nazi regime, the term “special treatment” was used euphemistically for Jews and others to be exterminated. Today, the medical establishment (AMA, American Academy of Pediatrics, etc.) refers to abortion as the physicians duty “to provide care and treatment” for unwanted pregnancies.
Block 20 at Auschwitz, where “experiments” were “terminated” with a lethal injection of phenol to the heart, was known by both inmates and doctors as the “treatment room.” The room in abortion clinics where the abortion is actually committed is commonly known as the “procedure room.”"

"Although only twenty doctors were brought to trial at Nuremberg for experimenting on human guinea pigs, the holocaust allowed a limitless supply of human victims. Hundreds, if not thousands, of German doctors actively experimented on Jews and other prisoners in Nazi Germany. Methods of sterilization were experimented with from injections that caused infections of the ovaries, to x-ray burning of reproductive organs. Pre-cancerous growths of cervices were induced and studied.
In addition, the tissue and organs of victims were frequently harvested for further experimentation. The same, of course, is going on in America today. Abortion clinics supply the medical establishment a virtually endless supply of human tissue that would otherwise be unavailable. Pharmaceutical companies and research hospitals all pay top dollar for organs, limbs and tissue from aborted fetuses."

"In 1933, when the Nazi’s came to power, the law was changed to legalize abortion and make this a matter of decision for a medical review board. The development of Germany’s abortion policy was left to the county’s most vociferous abortion advocacy group, the Berlin Chamber of Physicians."

"Hitler actively promoted the destruction of the crippled, poor and unemployed classes, as did Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Abortion led to forced sterilization, which led to “euthanasia,” which led to Auschwitz."

"Margaret Sanger, the alcoholic and Demerol addict, who spawned the International Planned Parenthood Federation, was a proponent of forced eugenics, segregation, abortion, birth control and sexual immorality. Here are some of her quotes.
“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”
“Eugenics is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives.”
“Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying a dead weight of human waste an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”
“The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.”
“[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children…”
“Give dysgenic groups [people with ‘bad genes’] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.”

Nazis policy:
"“Not only is it our task to prevent the multiplication of bad stocks; it is also to preserve the well-endowed stocks.”
“in the interest of social progress or the permanence even of civilization, the intellectual classes should have more children.”
“Our most pressing problem is to increase the birth rate from the superior and decrease that from the inferior.”
“The Aryan stock today is the most given to birth control and it must see that it does not suffer internationally by the relative ignorance of inferior stocks.”
“it would also lead to racial improvement to sterilize even those feeble-minded who do not necessarily fall in the hereditary group.”

http://www.klannedparenthood.com/nazis-and-abortion/

Peter

---------- Post added at 12:43 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:39 AM ----------

Here is an incredibly violent site that show you what is taking place in an abortion (please be warned/advised of the graphic violence):

https://www.abortionno.org/

http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/monica/mm7a.htm

[2a] When you make one group of human beings of lesser value than another group you are giving reasons and justification to discriminate against that group of lesser value. If you don't think that around 1.5 billion unborn human beings are dead because they are deemed of lesser value than other human beings, then why should you feel that 6 million Jews is of any greater value than the Nazis, or the blacks in South Africa? The same principle is involve here - do human beings have intrinsic value? Yes or no?

[3a] Obviously, both views cannot logically be right. They state opposites. Either the judgment you are defending here (Pro-choice), or the belief I am defending here (Pro-life) is wrong.

[Belthazor]

No, it's not an arbitrary standard. "Arbitrary" means "random" so an arbitrary standard on when a fetus should be entitled to legal rights of some kind would be one that is more or less random.

Actually arbitrary means no such thing:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/arbitrary?s=t
adjective
1.
subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion:
an arbitrary decision.
2.
decided by a judge or arbiter rather than by a law or statute.
3.
having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical:
an arbitrary government.
4.
capricious; unreasonable; unsupported:
an arbitrary demand for payment.
5.
Mathematics. undetermined; not assigned a specific value:
an arbitrary constant.
noun, plural arbitraries.
6.
arbitraries, Printing. (in Britain) peculiar (def 9).


In particular, I like this one:
"4. capricious; unreasonable; unsupported:
an arbitrary demand for payment."

---------- Post added at 07:51 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:45 AM ----------

As far as I can tell, there are no laws protecting human life until it reaches at least the second trimester (I don't know exactly when the legal restrictions start).

But if a fetus had the same rights as a 4 yr old (as Future argues) or if conception was currently the legal definition of when life starts to exist (as you said), the fetus would be protected from being legally aborted (killed).

[mican333]

What are you suggesting I mean by the word human?

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm asking you what you mean. Are you refusing to define the terms that you are using? I would say anything that's "human" has human DNA and therefore unfertilized eggs, which have human DNA, are "human". Now obviously that is not what you mean. So unless you want to include unfertilized eggs under the umbrella of "human" for this discussion, you need to define the term.

Quite simply, it appears to me that you are equivocating - as in intentionally using imprecise terminology to erase the difference between born humans and human fetuses and therefore be able to claim that they are essentially the same by just using a word instead of using an argument that establishes that they are the same in a way that they are equally deserving of the right to life.

Maybe I'm right about you equivocating and maybe I'm wrong. But one sure way to avoid equivocation is to nail down precise definitions of the words that we use. So either give me the definition of "human" that you want to use or we are going to use the one that I forwarded (having human DNA).

If you are going to treat one human different than another human in ending its life, by declassifying its human worth, you open the door to do so with any human being.

Support or retract this assertion.

Everything necessary and everything that makes you 'you' was present at conception, just not developed. If someone were to kill you at conception or in the first or third trimester, that person would be killing you.

I didn't have anything resembling a human brain at conception so I didn't have everything that made me "me".

But even if I do accept that the moment that sperm meets egg, I exist and for anyone or anything to prevent me from exiting the womb as a living being is essentially murdering me, then God (assuming one holds that God created the reproductive system along with everything else) was just as likely murder me as not. Why do I say this? Because half of all fertilized eggs don't implant on the uterine wall and therefore are ejected from the woman's body and die. So once an egg is fertilized it is as likely to be killed by the natural reproductive cycle as implant most likely (but not always for even if no abortions happen, some pregnancies end on their own) be carried to term. Given that it's natural for MOST fertilized eggs to not reach birth, I think it's reasonable for a person to not think that a freshly fertilized egg is the same as a born human. If one did think that, then they would have to view the natural reproductive cycle, where over half of the humans die, pretty similar to a plague (which is also natural) that wipes out over half of humanity. And btw, this is not an argument to support that once the egg does attach to the wall and can gestate normally it should not have the right to life (again I don't argue this point either way) but that it seems perfectly reasonable for a person to think that a fertilized egg and a born human are not exactly the same in regards to their life value. Even a pro-lifer can have this opinion and just say "While I agree they aren't exactly the same, they are both entitled to the right to life".

So as far as your notion that a fertilized egg has the exact same value as a born person, I see no reason that even a pro-lifer must agree with you.

It does follow that if you place little value on one human being because you don't see them quite as human as another person you are discriminating against that human, making them less than what they are. Devaluing is what Hitler did to the Jews. He devalued them, which I will give evidence for later in my response to your post. It is what Apartheid did to the person of color. It is what you (here) and others are doing to the unborn. You think that just because the law makes it legal that it becomes right.

Again, I'm not arguing for the pro-choice side so that is not necessarily what I think.

And you absolutely did not bridge the gap that holding that the unborn do not have the appropriate value will lead a person or a society to think that certain born human beings likewise don't have value and it's permissible to kill them.

Let me put it this way. I do agree that having less value for the unborn will increase the chances that we will have legalized abortion. I also agree that having less value for born Jews lead was a factor in the killing born Jews. What I don't agree with and you have not supported is that having less value for the unborn will increase the chances of killing born Jews or any born group of humans.

Saying A (abortion) will lead to B (legalized killing of born people) without explaining a valid mechanism for this happening or showing a prior historical example of this happening is the very definition of the Slippery Slope fallacy.

Funny you ask. It started with devaluing human life, which led to legalizing the classification of some people as "sub-human" or not of equal value. Once a life is devalued, it creates a culture to permit atrocities and acts of evil against the human group.

I agree that devaluing the lives of Jews lead to a holocaust against Jews.

But did legalized abortion in Germany lead to a general devaluing of life which opened the door for devaluing the lives of Jews? If that is your argument, please support it. If it is not your argument, then you have not shown that abortion can lead to the permissible killing of certain born people.

Anyway, I don't care to make this thread unnecessarily long by repeating this challenge over and over again so any of your upcoming points that can be addressed by this argument will not be responded to.

My opinion. What are you giving here? If you are playing both sides against each other, as you claim, then that is all you are giving - an opinion. Where are your facts? If all you have is a subjective opinion, then your opinion is no better than mine.

Please, support your own opinion!

I'm not forwarding an opinion. I'm forwarding a fact regarding the abortion debate. My position regarding the abortion debate is:

Neither the pro-choice nor the pro-life side of the abortion debate can prove their positions to be correct because the central premise of either side is ultimately subjective. The primary issue is whether the unborn should have a legal right to life (should the laws protect the life of the unborn at all stages of pregnancy) and neither side can prove that they are right because their position will always be subjective (opinion).

So while I will not say that your opinion regarding the unborn is wrong (for opinions really can't be wrong), it really isn't anything that you can prove is right and therefore pro-choicers will never have an obligation to agree with you. And likewise there is no reason that you ever have to agree with a pro-choicers opinion on when the fetus should have legal protections.

So ultimately the pro-lifers and pro-choicers will have to agree to disagree. That is essentially my position regarding the abortion debate.

On this analogy, are these young people less valuable than you as a human being then? You protect them outside of the womb, guiding them until they can make responsible decisions for themselves, but inside the womb, you treat them like a piece of garbage. In fact, once born these young people are guarded and protected with a level of protection that most adults do not experience, while they develop the traits necessary to cope with life, but inside of the womb you dismiss their right to develop these same traits to cope.

Again, I'm not arguing the pro-choice position so this it not MY position. But regardless, I see nothing here that supports that abortion should be outlawed so I don't really see an obligation to respond.

But there is inside the womb. Why is this? Why is the RIGHT to life taken away?

That's a question and therefore does not amount to an argument against abortion.

But I will point out that pro-choicer would likely point out that the unborn's right to life was not taken away because it didn't have it in the first place.

No, not a false equivalency; it is an analogy. It is comparing something to something else. Because something is small in number (the Jews) or small in size (the unborn) and powerless in voicing their opinions, these groups are exploited to the point of the taking of their lives.

Which is no way supports that notion that abortion will lead to genocide. I mean by the logic you are forwarding, killing farm animals (small in number and powerless) will lead to genocide.

You do that when you defend one position against another - you side with the position to support, even if it is just as devil's advocate, which I doubt.

Attacking an invalid argument for one side is not supporting the opposite side. I'm attacking your arguments on their weaknesses and this is no way equates to an argument for legalized abortion.

Let me put it this way - if a pro-choicer said "Abortion should be legal because fetuses are little", I would think it's a bad argument and might point out the flaws in that argument. Does that mean that I've taken the pro-life side and am essentially arguing that abortion should be outlawed? Of course not.

Likewise I argue as an agnostic and if you see me debate atheists (and I do with some regularity), you will see me point out that they can't prove that God does not exist. That doesn't make a theist anymore than when I point out that you can't prove that God does exist, that makes me an atheist.

You reason that neither side is BETTER than the other since they are both subjective views. I am trying to establish that these two opposing views are not equally valid if in any way the human is valuable. By not defending the unborn human life you condone the taking of it. Once you open the door to justify the taking of one innocent human life, you open the door to do so with other innocent human lives.

Slippery slope fallacy.

Again, show me an example of legalized abortion opening the door to the mass killing of human beings.

You have expressed that you do not see the unborn as having the same value (different legal status) as those who are born since you continually oppose my defense of the unborn. And, in my opinion, based on your arguments, your playing devil's advocate is cowardly, since that is your claim. It means you do not have the conviction to stand for what you believe, your inner conviction. But I also feel that what someone expresses with outward words usually reflects the heart issue - what they believe deep down.

Wow. Hey, do me a favor and DO NOT RESORT TO PERSONAL COMMENTS ABOUT ME.

That is horrible etiquette. Seriously, don't do it. If you can't avoid getting personal, then don't debate me.

And besides that, one's personally attributes in no way has any effect on the quality of their arguments. Using one's personal characteristics (even if one is completely correct about their opponent which you are not in this case) to invalidate their arguments is to engage in the Ad Hom Fallacy.

It does make a difference. If you murder another human being you are tried for murder. If that human being dies of natural causes there is no fault attributed to you.

Granted, a father will grieve in either situation, but a killer will hopefully be brought to justice.

But then I'm talking about the grief. The grief would likely be about the same whether she died by intent or accident. THAT makes little difference.

Likewise if one TRULY values the egg at the moment it is fertilized, it would be huge loss if it was killed and whether it was by another's hands or by a natural occurrence should make little difference. Maybe it's a little bit worse if it's killed by human hands but one would certainly not be blasé about it dying by natural causes if they really felt it had the same value as a born person.

As a hypothetical, if God came to you and said that he will either cure one born child of a fatal disease or make sure that five fertilized eggs implant when they otherwise would not implant and then die, would you save the one born child or the five eggs?

And despite whatever answer you would give, do you think the average pro-lifers would save the five eggs instead of the one child? I doubt it. And BTW, I am not charging pro-lifers with hypocrisy. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a pro-lifer to say "I would save the one child so I guess I do value that child's life more but nonetheless, I do value the fertilized eggs and hold that they likewise have a right to life". But nonetheless, if they save that one child, they are valuing the life of the born over the unborn to some extent.

BS. You are taking a side, even if it is just playing devil's advocate. You WOULD NOT be making an argument AGAINST my position if you had not chosen a side (for whatever reason you have to do so). To my mind, it seems to be a game you are playing. You claim you are trying to show that neither position (pro-life vs. pro-choice) is any better than the other (both subjective) except for the stance which you decide to defend.

But if a pro-choicer joined the debate and argued that it's a fact, not an opinion, that the fetus does not have the right to life, I would argue against that position since it contradicts my position that both sides are ultimately subjective.

So theoretically, I could be debating against both you and a pro-choicer at the exact same time. So if that were to occur, would I be simultaneously be arguing for and against abortion at the same time.

Of course not. The notion that I am debating a person who is forwarding one side of the debate does not mean that I support the other side (unless I am directly arguing for the other side).

Regardless, any personal characteristics of mine are irrelevant to the quality of my argument and therefore trying to point out what I "really think" is just spam. And since you apparently went far enough to attack me personally over this, I ask that you drop this line of debate. Again, its basically spam.

The legal outcome was a vote of seven to two. What about the legal rights of the unborn? Where did they go? They were stripped away with the decision. The most defenseless had their right to life taken from them on the decision of seven to two.

Actually, prior to Roe, it was up to the individual states to decide the legal status of abortion and therefore states were free to allow abortion. So to be clear, there wasn't no national recognition of the fetal right to life prior to Roe.

And if we go back to the earliest U.S. laws regarding abortion, we get:

"When the United States first became independent, most states applied English common law to abortion. This meant it was not permitted after quickening, or the start of fetal movements, usually felt 15-20 weeks after conception." So while I won't posit that the laws were always like that, it does seem that there wasn't usually a legal recognition of the fetal right to life at the earliest stages of development.

And of course, that does not mean that there shouldn't now be a uniform legal protection for the unborn but in regards to your question about where the legal right to life for the unborn went, I'm not sure it ever existed (which is not to say that the opinion that it should exist now is wrong - opinions can't be wrong).

I'm not saying this will lead to that. I'm saying it has. I'm presenting the argument that when you devalue human life, all these options are present; one life can be argued as no more valuable than any other.

Then SUPPORT OR RETRACT that is has. Give me an example of a state deciding to legalize abortion and then using that reasoning to justify a crime like genocide.

And if the argument that "devaluing life" by allowing abortion leads to the devaluing of the life of those who are born has any merit, it should be easily provable by looking at homicide rates for surely a decrease in the value of life will lead to greater killing of those who are born. But over the past couple of decade, the murder rate has decreased significantly.

"The US homicide rate in 2014, the most recent year available, was 4.5 per 100,000. The 2014 total follows a long downward trend and is the lowest homicide rate recorded since 1963 when the rate was 4.6 per 100,000."

https://mises.org/blog/fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low

[1] A human being - a being that is human. It either is a human being or some other kind of being.
Are you trying to dehumanize it by semantics?

No, I'm pointing out that the term is subjective. We can agree to call it a "human being" but that is a subjective choice.

[2] So what you are saying is morality = subjectivity. How do you get morality from two different subjective opinions? Let me boil it down for you; you force your view on the other or you are forced to adopt the other's view.

Subjectivity is not the case regarding morality if there is an objective being who has revealed what is right and good. We have an objective stance when we agree with such a being. If this is not the case (no objective being), then your opinion is no better than any other (just enforced if you have the means to do so), so what are you saying with your moral outrage?

I've never said that my moral opinion is better than anyone else's. And while you can argue that there is an external being who has objectively determined what is objectively right and what is objectively wrong, we are talking about human opinions here, not God's opinion.

You can say that there is a God and HIS opinion is not subjective (and I won't argue otherwise, in part because this is not a debate about God), but I've seen no evidence YOUR opinion is better than anyone else's nor has it been shown that anyone else's opinion is better than yours.

So again, the pro-lifers and pro-choicers arguments are rooted in subjectivity and therefore they ultimately have to agree to disagree.

You are arguing that the unborn is less of a human than the young child, that it does not have the same value for it (the unborn) and can be killed on the whim of the woman, but not so after birth. That is a value distinction. Can you not see this? You even gave a scenario regarding value placed on the unborn versus newborn to that effect with the four women.

How is my question a false premise? If you are going to devalue a human being because of its size, or its level of development, or is an environment, or its dependency (since these are the differences between an unborn human and an adult human), then you are making the argument of its value based on one of these qualities.

Sure. And it's agreed upon by EVERYONE that once a person is born, they have fully achieved the right to life. So a person placing less value on those who are not yet born in no way requires them to place varying value on those who are born.

I didn't argue that it did remove the value of the born. It was not my purpose to show the value of the born removed by the pro-choice. I argue why it can't or shouldn't remove the value of the unborn by basing it on the born and the born's humanity. I argued that one group, the unborn, has its value removed, and if one group of human beings is expendable, then someone will find a way to devalue another group. I argue that if you are going to devalue the unborn, why can't you (justification for) devalue the newborn, who largely has the same attributes as the unborn, except for its location/environment.

Losing the value of a group of humans has led to the exploitation of that group through human history. I already cited some examples. If you want to argue that these are not valid then go ahead, but your claim that I supplied no examples is not true.

You have shown that devaluing a group of BORN HUMANS have lead to the killing of THE SAME BORN HUMANS. You have not provided any example of the devaluing or UNBORN HUMANS leading to the killing of BORN HUMANS.

So the argument that devaluing unborn lives will lead to the devaluing of born lives and increase the odds of born people being killed is not supported at all.

Do you have an example of this happening or not?

What is the difference between an unborn minutes before birth and minutes after birth - location/environment?
What is the difference in its level of development?
What is the difference in its size?
What is the difference in its dependency, other than inside the womb the woman is the sole caregiver?

Why is the newborn protected but the unborn is not?

Those are questions, not arguments.

It is because the unborn human being has been devalued by society at large. Holywood, as a gatekeeper of our societies, is partly to blame for promoting these liberal, socialist views of humanity in everything it produces. Just look what it promotes on a daily basis on TV and at the movies; the worthlessness of human life, its pro stance for abortion.

And yet the murder rate in society has been steadily decreasing over the last few decades. It seems our value on the lives of the born has not been particularly compromised.

Once you start with one group of human beings as being less valuable than another, then you support the idea of devaluing other human beings.

That is why I continue to press you as to whether the unborn is a human being.

Which is a semantic argument. I mean yes, we can find ONE term that applies to both born humans and unborn humans and use that word to describe both groups and if you want to use "human being", that's fine. So they are both human beings and they have similarities.

But that does not make them the exact same thing and therefore what applies to one group does not necessarily apply to the other. And if we are talking about two different group of human beings and their differences are relevant to a debate, then we should add the relevant distinctions. So while both the unborn human beings and the born human beings are human beings, if we are referring to just the unborn, we need to say "unborn human beings".

And your argument that allowing the killing of UNBORN human beings will or has lead to the acceptability of killing certain BORN human beings is unsupported. The notion that one is significantly more like to morally accept the killing of BORN human beings once they morally accept the killing of UNBORN human beings (and therefore such killings are more likely to happen) is unsupported.

[1a] I have supported it. I have argued that the unborn is as human as the born. If you think it is less human, then support this belief.

Well, I agree that they are both "human" as in they have human DNA. But that does not support that the acceptance of killing one would lead to the acceptance of killing the other.

[Let me compare the two, abortion and the killing of six million Jews, and in total 11 million undesirables by the Nazis.

A similarity in some ways does not equate a comparison in ALL ways. If you want to argue that killing one will lead to the acceptance of killing the other, you need to support by something than just saying that it will.

Here is another site that compares the likes of Margret Sanger (and her philosophy) and Planned Parenthood to Nazi "doctors of death" and their philosophical principles.

But I don't see any argument there. You can use that stuff but you first need to make your own argument and then use whatever stuff you have to support whatever you are saying. Just posting a bunch of stuff without showing the context to a particular argument of yours doesn't really give me a solid viewpoint to address.

When you make one group of human beings of lesser value than another group you are giving reasons and justification to discriminate against that group of lesser value. If you don't think that around 1.5 billion unborn human beings are dead because they are deemed of lesser value than other human beings, then why should you feel that 6 million Jews is of any greater value than the Nazis, or the blacks in South Africa? The same principle is involve here - do human beings have intrinsic value? Yes or no?

It is not the same principle. You can just ignore the difference between the born and the unborn and that is your SUBJECTIVE CHOICE but no one is obliged to agree with you that there are no fundamental differences between the two that justify one and not the other.

Just the fact that you can semantically fit them both under the term "human being" does not change that.

[3a] Obviously, both views cannot logically be right. They state opposites. Either the judgment you are defending here (Pro-choice), or the belief I am defending here (Pro-life) is wrong.

It's not an issue of whether one makes the unborn "lesser" than the born. Obviously to allow abortion, the unborn must be lesser. The disagreement is whether it should be legally permissible to make the unborn so "lesser" that it's justifiable to abort the unborn in the early stages of pregnancy.

And since the pro-life and pro-choice answer to that will both be subjective answers, neither of them are right or wrong.

---------- Post added at 01:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:26 PM ----------

Actually arbitrary means no such thing

Yes it does.

"1 a : existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will an arbitrary choice
When a task is not seen in a meaningful context it is experienced as being arbitrary."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary

But if a fetus had the same rights as a 4 yr old (as Future argues) or if conception was currently the legal definition of when life starts to exist (as you said), the fetus would be protected from being legally aborted (killed).

Maybe we are miscommunicating.

You said "If a human life begins at conception, there are current laws to protect it" and I'm just pointing out that there are no current laws to protect the human life at conception.

[Belthazor]

Yes it does.

"1 a : existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will an arbitrary choice
When a task is not seen in a meaningful context it is experienced as being arbitrary."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary

I believe it says "seemingly", and the rest of your source pretty much goes with mine:

1
a : existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will an arbitrary choice
When a task is not seen in a meaningful context it is experienced as being arbitrary. —Nehemiah Jordan
b : based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something an arbitrary standard take any arbitrary positive number
2
a : not restrained or limited in the exercise of power : ruling by absolute authority an arbitrary government
b : marked by or resulting from the unrestrained and often tyrannical exercise of power protection from arbitrary arrest and detention
3
law : depending on individual discretion (as of a judge) and not fixed by law The manner of punishment is arbitrary.

---------- Post added at 11:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 AM ----------

Maybe we are miscommunicating.

You said "If a human life begins at conception, there are current laws to protect it" and I'm just pointing out that there are no current laws to protect the human life at conception.

Definitely a start


Though I still don't see life starting at conception as a subjective and/or arbitrary point and the pro choice side seems completely subjective and/or arbitrary.

It seems something IBELSD said is probably fairly close to right on. Something to the effect of "we (our society) just don't value the unborn very highly". Just not sure why that is?