It was once legal to own slaves. Because it's a law does not make it right. We need science to define what it is to be human. It is not a chicken fetus being abortied...it is a human fetus. The law decided a human fetus is not worthy of life if the human host doesn't want it. The right to life begins when the law says it does. Just like the law said at one time it was okay to own another human being. What if we made a law that said it was okay to kill the elderly, or the infirmed? I'm going to have to disagree. We can't trust the law or the lawmakers to tell us what a human is. We're intentionally killing a distinct human entity when we abort. It's not a miscarriage or involuntary death for this entity...it is chosen to kill this being, this human fetus. The law says it's okay to do this. What if a law redefined a human that did not include the elderly or the infirmed? What if the law said killing them was not the same thing as killing the young and healthy? This could happen. A society can approve this, look at Nazi Germany. They approved of the killing of the mentally ill, of the Jew, of the gypsy, of the homosexual...all deemed as less than human. We must never trust the law or the lawmakers to tell us if we are human or not. Human enough for life.
Sorry you can't read, I posted "Of course we're human at conception ....but we are not A human. The rest of your post is just slipperyslope fallacy rambling. So you believe woman should lose their right to their own bodies and you DON'T compare yourself to Nazis????
It's not rambling. The law defines what is A person. Science says an embryo is human, a fetus is human, an infant is human, a baby is human, a teenager is human, an adult is human. The law says, we are a "person" at 10 weeks, or 20 weeks or some arbitrary number; or how about when we feel pain, or when we can exist outside the womb...then we are human. You will see. Are you aware that the most expensive medical costs are incurred in the last year of person's life? In order to save money, a law could be established that those deemed terminal, will be euthanized. If you have less than a year to live, it's cheaper to get rid of you now than waste all that money just to extend life with no real quality. You must be naive if you actually don't think lawmakers won't do this, or can't do this. They can in fact do this. The Supreme court decided a fetus is not human enough for life, the host can decide to terminate it's existence. The Supreme court could decide the infirmed and the terminally ill are equally unworthy of living. There is nothing to prevent this. All of our faith in the system is predicated upon trust in the lawmakers. This isn't rambling, this will happen. We are on an unsustainable path with Medicare and soon the ranks of the elderly will increase even more and the system will break. Lawmakers will deem euthanasia as legal,. What is "a" human will be redefined again and rationalized t kill the infirmed and elderly in order to save on costs. Just like the utilitarian reason we keep abortion legal. Society doesn't want a bunch of unwanted babies floating around. Killing them while a fetus saves on costs.
It is true that the genetic material from the egg and sperm is combined during the first cell division to form the complete DNA of one new human individual (or in somewhat rare cases more than one individual with the same DNA). An interesting detail here is that you get the same complete DNA every time, if you take one specific sperm to fertilize one specific egg. You could pick one sperm and one egg, for example, freeze them and wait for a year before proceeding with fertilization. During that year, the complete DNA of this new human being was already completely determined. If DNA is all that matters, you could argue that this specific human being existed completely a year before conception. The point I'm trying to make here is that DNA is merely a molecule that can exist in various lengths and a huge number of variations, which can be copied accurately, "read out" to assemble proteins and more later on. This complicated biological machinery is certainly fascinating, but pretty far away from what we usually feel empathy for. It may be obvious to you that human genetic code embedded inside a fertilized egg, the beginning of the life of one (or more) new human being(s), is all that's needed to deserve the same protection as a born human being with its whole personality, dreams, fears, hopes and more. My subjective outlook on life differs from yours. There is much more to a person than some DNA and a potential to grow from there. I am fine with your definition of when an individual's life starts. I also don't mind calling this definition objective. The purpose of a definition is to make sure that we're talking about the same thing. I think we've achieved that. However, you've suddenly taken quite a leap that I disagree with afterwards. Merely stating a definition of when the life of a human being begins, does not mean that the law should ensure the same protections for all human life from this particular starting point all the way to the other end of a lifespan. This is only your subjective preference. Mine is different and involves at least some higher brain functions.
While a few brain cells exist at 10 weeks this is hardly a developed brain. "Significant Brain function" ability to feel pain and so forth does not occur until the "wiring" of the brain has been completed. You can read the technical version in any number of pain research articles. In a nutshell - there is no significant brain function prior to 20-24 weeks. This is why some states have adopted this time as the cut-off. There are no "Facial expressions" possible until after this point. I think that having this conversation (defining what characteristics need be requisite to consider the entity a child) is a reasonable place for this debate to start. What is not reasonable is the continued claims of the folks on the anti-choice bus that claim a zygote is a child.
That's clearly an example of what I term "Bornism". Thank goodness the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law to all persons. What about your head? because a fetus has a head.
Yup, equal protection for all and that, sad for you, includes women . Yup, my head is human, it is not A human....and your terms (bornism) mean nothing.
There's no question about when a new life begins forming, what's being questioned is when a person starts and whether or not a fetus inside a woman's body takes precedence over the woman herself. Pro-choicers say it both can and can't, because pro-choicers want it to be the mother's decision. Pro-lifers consider the beginning of life and the beginning of personhood to be the same moment in time, but these are not the same things. Science tells us when the life part begins, it's up to us and our legislators to decide when the person part does. In an honest society that values individuals and individual rights, personhood would begin at birth when individuality begins and not before.
I believe it is all about population control, made easier to enforce as it is being sold as a "choice", and it only affects the unseen and voiceless. In places where the birth rate is low they tend to restrict abortion and offer incentives to have children. In places where they want to restrict population growth they make abortion easily accessible and offer incentives to not procreate, such as exemptions from military if you are steralized, or they encourage society to shun you if you have more than one child, sometimes even making it law to only have one child. The government always has an agenda, I want to push for morality whatever that agenda is.
Depends which definition of child you are using. As the offspring of two parents, or as a person below the age of majority. I go with the first definition as no matter how old my son's and daughter's are, they will always be my children. Its where we get the term "adult child".
Lets go with your definition of offspring - Offspring: The progeny, or young, born to a person. In a larger sense, the offspring are collectively all the descendants, the brood, or the family. For example, the offspring of someone with a genetic (inherited) condition, such as Huntington?s disease, are themselves at risk for the disease. - http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9558 Glad to see you finally accept that a child or off spring are born.
Using the word 'murder' is problematic with this issue. It is a legal term; not just a verb and noun to use loosely with the subject of abortion. Besides that, as someone who is pro-choice, late term is where I personally see it being controversial. It is a messy area when to define life beginning and since I am no scientist in this area, I choose to take the view that late term is where I have the most issues with. Late term abortion transitions from a federal issue to personal responsibility in my opinion. Kind of like Roe vs. Wade got us to the point that women could make the choice and if you get to late term pregnancy and still haven't made the choice then you risk the slippery slope of ending life without just cause. At that point, there's no excuse for the woman or the man to not know what to do and 1.4% of abortions happen during late term(late term with that percentage being after 21 weeks) so it makes it a pointless point in regards to abortion in my opinion. Even if we could make some moral judgment it doesn't address the importance of abortion right as a whole.
In both estimations you would be incorrect, it has nothing to do with population control (except in the sense of a personal population control), I for one have not seen any state enforcement of abortion as a means to limited population .. have you? Abortion is not easier to obtain, it is in fact becoming more difficult in the US, so your assertion of it being "made easier to enforce as it is being sold as a "choice"" is also wrong. At least 58 U.S. abortion clinics -- almost 1 in 10 -- have shut or stopped providing the procedure since 2011 as access vanishes faster than ever amid a Republican-led push to legislate the industry out of existence. - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ose-at-record-pace-after-states-tighten-rules but of course I expect you are more than happy at this situation, but it does prove that your comment is false. Really where, and better still what is the estimated abortion rate for those places? Only one country I know that does that and that is China .. is that the sort of regime you want in control? Please supply your evidence that there are exemptions from the military if you are sterilized? Again, only China that I know of does this . .where as in plenty of countries females are shunned and slut shamed - even killed - for having children out of marriage, as to having large families, would you care to look up the infant mortality rate in some third world countries. The "agenda" of the US government is to abide by the Constitution which has as one of it foundations the right of the individual to be free of government restrictions as far as possible, I find that restrictions placed on to a persons medical issues based on personal opinion is one of the worst. Whose morality, yours? Why is your morality so much better than any other persons, why should you morality be forced onto other people
Lets go with your definition of offspring - Offspring: The progeny, or young, born to a person. In a larger sense, the offspring are collectively all the descendants, the brood, or the family. For example, the offspring of someone with a genetic (inherited) condition, such as Huntington?s disease, are themselves at risk for the disease. - http://www.medicinenet.com/script/ma...rticlekey=9558 Glad to see you finally accept that a child or off spring are born. Any comments to your preferred definition and what it means?
