quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I could've sworn one side believed ending a human life was wrong, and the other side very often had serious doubts about when a human life is said to begin.
I think the terminology is a little more slippery than we may realize. There is slippage between "a life" and "alive."
There are many collections of cells in a human body, even discretely distinct from the rest of the body, which have both human DNA and are living (in the sense of growing and developing, needing nutrition, etc.), such as tumors. That doesn't mean a tumor is "a human life."
I am not saying human fetuses are tumors. I am saying the language is slippery for capturing concepts, and for a human fetus to be "a human life" must mean more than just that it has human DNA and is alive -- otherwise one would be saying the fetus is equivalent to any other human non-dead tissue.
What that "more" would consist of and whether the fetus has it any any given (or all) time is where the argument is made. That argument hasn't been conceded if one just concedes it is living human tissue, which isn't really a point of disagreement. Moreover, we cut out some living human tissue all the time without any controversy.
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quote:Originally posted by steven: I've read that something like half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, if not more. When a fetus is less than a hundred cells (or for that matter, doesn't yet have a heart or brain), its odds of actually surviving are still fairly low.
Is it really fair to call abortion murder, in cases where the pregnancy is so new that the fetus has less than a 50% chance at survival?
I don't understand why you think that the percentage chance of survial would enter into the "is it murder" equation. If someone had a type of cancer that left them with a 50% chance of survival, would it be fair to call shooting them murder?
The lack of a brain or brainwaves (or even brain of sufficient complexity) in a blastula or embryo seems like a much more compelling reason, to me, not to consider abortion (or at least all abortions) murder.
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Granted, there's no good way to have an abortion discussion. One side believes ending a human life is wrong in most all circumstances, the other thinks there should be an exception for abortion--makes for a very boring debate, so all sorts of conjecture gets thrown around in order to make both arguments seem more sound.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I agree, the chances of survival seem sort of unimportant.
I guess I'm alone on that one.
Most likely, yes.
By your logic, a person who has a 50% chance of dying, and a bubble that has a 50% chance of popping, are of equal importance.
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quote:Originally posted by CT: I think the terminology is a little more slippery than we may realize. There is slippage between "a life" and "alive."
The second point of slippage is at "human." People sometimes slip between "human tissue" and "a human being" without realizing it.
For example, one may ask "Is it human?" Taking "human" as equal to "human tissue" means human DNA is enough. But "a human being" means something in addition to having human DNA, for reasons similar to those given above: a tumor is human tissue, but it is not a human being in itself.
So for a fetus not to be equilivated to a tumor requires something more than just it being human tissue -- and that is the point of consideration to address.
Added: Asking "is it human?" isn't enough to establish the point if just having human DNA will satisfy.
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: If someone had a type of cancer that left them with a 50% chance of survival, would it be fair to call shooting them murder?
There's a big difference there. People sometimes spontaneously recover from cancer, even "terminal" cancer. No fetus has ever recovered, on its own, from a miscarriage.
I agree that lack or presence of a brain or brain waves works better as proof of human life. However, I doubt there will be many pro-lifers jumping on that bandwagon...
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quote:There's a big difference there. People sometimes spontaneously recover from cancer, even "terminal" cancer. No fetus has ever recovered, on its own, from a miscarriage.
Yeah, it's not exactly surprising that a fetus won't survive a miscarriage, steven.
If someone is a human being, whether they would have survived or not because of a given condition doesn't change the fact that if someone then kills that human being-not the given condition-then...it's an unprovoked killing of a human being. Y'know? Pretty straightforward. Most people file 'unprovoked killing of a human being' under 'murder'.
What happens in miscarriages has nothing to do with the induced death of a fetus. And I say all this as someone with a whole lot of uncertainty and gray area as to when human life begins. CT has touched on some of the, well, enormous subtleties. Your example was silly.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Most people file 'unprovoked killing of a human being' under 'murder'.
That's not how murder is defined. But, then it would be like rehashing an Ornery thread, so I'll keep my mouth shut.
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There isn't just one way to define murder, manji. In most conversations I've ever had, people don't call it 'murder' when it's a justified-or provoked-killing of a human being. Self-defense, war, even insanity.
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Even a fully born person does not have the right, for example, to use another person's blood or kidneys. Even if it would be the right thing to do, we balk at legally requiring them to donate an organ. Even if the person who needs the blood or kidney needs it because of something the other person did.
Added: For example, if a child got ill and needed a kidney should we legally force his father to give him one? It is would be the right thing for the father to do, but should we be able to force him to do it?
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That becomes a different discussion, kmbboots. Morally speaking, we might think about someone who had for example life-saving medicine in their possession and didn't give it to someone they knew would die otherwise as being...less-than-good, to say the least.
And, really, I think you overestimate how many people would actually balk at using legal force to compel someone for the use of their blood or the (temporary) use of their kidneys, if someone actually did something to the person in need that prompted the need. It's just...well, really awkward and difficult to get that kind of thing into the proper legal forms necessary.
For example, if I were to somehow create a need for blood or temporary organ use in another human being, would you actually object to my being legally compelled to do so once it had been proven? I mean morally speaking. If it could be done so that just that is what would happen, are you telling me you'd really object?
Because if the answer is 'yes', then the question has to be, "If a person's body can't be controlled to cure a harm caused, why is it acceptable that their entire body be imprisoned when it physically helps no one?"
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It is acceptable to imprison someone who has committed a crime to prevent them from committing more crimes.
I do balk at the use of force to violate someone else's body. Like I reject the idea of experimenting on unwilling human beings even though we would probably gain much life-saving knowledge. It reeks of slavery, of ownership, and of making the person so compelled less than human. Women were for so long considered less than human property, they rightfully resist being sucked back into that condition.
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So it's acceptable to take physical control of someone's entire body for days, months, years, or a lifetime for things ranging from vandalism to murder...but it's not acceptable to take physical control of their bodies, and use that control to actually redress a harm they've caused?
I'm afraid you'll have to sell that just a bit, because it seems incredibly arbitrary: OK to take total control of a body on one hand, even when it won't 'cure' a crime; unacceptable bordering on slavery to take partial control of a body to actually cure a harm done. The women-only angle doesn't enter into this question, kmbboots. I'm not talking about abortion, and I'm not talking about the other things potentially involved with specific organ control over a human body.
If taking control of one's body to redress a crime and then giving control of one's body back to them after the crime is redressed reeks of slavery...why on Earth doesn't taking control of one's body to prevent other crimes from being committed to other people not 'reek of slavery'?
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Limiting movement of a body (incarceration) is a very different thing than invading or otherwise violating that body.
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And of course it's not just limiting movement. It's limiting movement, activities, speech, food intake, access to loved ones-that's just a few. Also, I think if you asked someone actually in prison (or who has been), they might say they've been violated. For the above reasons, and more.
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That crazy guy who shot the Congresswoman- he is currently in prison but the judge ruled that they can't force him to take antipsychotic drugs. Our standard for forcing medication or other medical procedures is significantly higher than our standard for imprisonment.
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I know our standard *is* different, I'm asking why. For example in this case it's ok to incarcerate a crazy guy...but not make him well.
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quote:Originally posted by steven: I agree that lack or presence of a brain or brain waves works better as proof of human life. However, I doubt there will be many pro-lifers jumping on that bandwagon...
Why not? that happens almost immediately after implantation (source here). I realize a lot of pro-life belief focuses on time before implantation (hence the dislike of IUDs), but is abortion within 3 weeks of conception a significant number?
According to this site, which purports to give CDC Data, 23% of abortions happen at less than 6 weeks gestational age (unfortunately, no one seems to know how much less, but 6 weeks gestation is still a week beyond brain development according to my first link, from the Mayo clinic). That would prove that at least 77% of abortions happen long after the period where the brain and nervous system develop... and I think any pro-lifer would be thrilled with a 77% reduction in the abortion rate. I know I would.
Why wouldn't the development of brain activity make a good compromise point?
edit: as an unrelated point, is anyone else disturbed that apparently 1/4 of abortions happen before the woman is 10 days late with her first period? That seems like an awful rush for such a life-changing decision.
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quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: edit: as an unrelated point, is anyone else disturbed that apparently 1/4 of abortions happen before the woman is 10 days late with her first period? That seems like an awful rush for such a life-changing decision.
Yes, that's how periods work.
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quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: Why wouldn't the development of brain activity make a good compromise point?
"Development of brain activity" can mean anything on a whole range of things, from the first membrane destabilization of the first neuron in the area (firing an impulse, which on its own is less complex than what happens when a protozoan eats food), to the ability to first manage and regulate homeostasis without higher function (similar to a "brain-dead" state, where the regulation of breathing and heart rate occurs, but the person is said to be dead nonetheless), to the development of the reticular formation (claimed by some to be the primitive seat of consciousness).
One reason it isn't a good starting point is that it isn't well-defined, and for a given chosen definition of a starting point, it remains debatable whether that is the relevant one.
I still think it's the best we have, and my gut goes with the reticular formation as the first point I think seems suitable for this sort of definition. However, it isn't an easy sell by any means.
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quote:Originally posted by steven: I agree that lack or presence of a brain or brain waves works better as proof of human life. However, I doubt there will be many pro-lifers jumping on that bandwagon...
Why not? that happens almost immediately after implantation (source here).
Equating the closing of the neural tube with the presence of the brain is rather a stretch, IMO.
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For me, the difference between aborting a pregnancy at six weeks, and killing a baby shortly after it's born is pretty small.
I pay a lot of attention to potential. The question of whether or not a fetus is truly alive in any sense when it's six weeks old doesn't really matter, because if you do what you're supposed to do, it WILL develop into a person. The parasite argument doesn't really work because a parasite will never develop into a thinking, breathing, sentient human being at the end of the gestation period.
Babies can't survive outside the womb without extreme amounts of care and attention to keep them healthy, fed, protected, and what not. I often see the "if it can survive outside the womb..." argument, which seems to only limit the criteria to whether or not it can breathe and function assuming you provide this high level of care to it, otherwise it's still in the parasite phase.
So to me, whether there's a single neuron, or the the baby is puzzling out decimals of pi doesn't much matter.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ...because if you do what you're supposed to do, it WILL develop into a person.
Really? Because I know a LOT of women who've miscarried later than 6 weeks. In some cases it's happened to the same woman several pregnancies in a row.
On a slightly different note, does forgetting to eat prenatal vitamins, or drinking alcohol, or taking drugs count as manslaughter or murder or negligent homicide? This is assuming that a miscarriage occurs as a result.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Miscarriages are a natural occurrence. Abortions aren't.
What about a miscarriage caused by a poor diet, or forgetting to take prenatal vitamins? Is that natural? How about one caused by drug use? Natural?
Dude, you're smart enough to know that there are gray areas here. Emotion is not the best basis for making laws. "Sober as a judge" refers to the fact that judges should not, and ideally do not, make judgments lightly, or purely based on emotion.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Yes, there are gray areas.
Having an abortion falls outside the gray area.
So I'll ask you AGAIN, since you were too busy reiterating dogma in your last post.
Is causing a miscarriage by forgetting to take prenatal vitamins or eating a poor diet a natural miscarriage?
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Roughly estimating, I think somewhere north of 60% of abortions in North America occur after six weeks. Equating that with infanticide is an interesting position.
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You say, "If we do what we're supposed to do, it will..." My question for you is, how do we decide what it is we're supposed to do? Isn't that decision going to be pretty arbitrary? Are we supposed to let nature take its course, come what may? No medical care until the midwife, then. Are we supposed to use every available means to protect and eventually birth the fetus, period? Then no abortions for mothers who are pregnant with children who will likely be stillborn, or even kill or maim the mothers themselves during labor. Personally, I probably do tend a bit closer in ideals on this question to you than to many other participants in this question...but I don't know how we decide what we're 'supposed' to do as though it were some factual baseline.
A parasite can, depending on the definition, develop into a human with all the qualifiers you mentioned. You're using as a part of your argument, "A fetus isn't a parasite because it's got the potential to be human." That suggests that humanity is an on/off status. Something either is human, or it isn't. It seems you know, but I fail to see why anyone else should be equally convinced.
Why is having an abortion at certain points in a pregnancy something we're simply not supposed to do, as a default? Why is it outside the gray area, as a given?
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Steven, you say enough silly and hostile things-in this conversation, no less-that you've got little standing to get holier than thou. I don't know who you're strutting for, but even people who agree with you on this topic ignore your thoughts as a matter of course. You're also, by your own admission, completely untrustworthy in an online setting. I really don't know who you think you're kidding.
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Steven said "brain waves" and that he doubted a pro-lifer would agree to that. As I understood the question, I've actually argued in the past for (what I thought was) the same thing steven was saying.
My understanding was that there are detectable, identifiable brain signals at 5-6 weeks gestation, which is how they were aware of the neural development. If I was wrong about that, I am...well... wrong. *shrug*
CT, since it's your gut-choice line, when does reticular formation typically occur?
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quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: which is how they were aware of the neural development.
Because of studying decades' worth of aborted fetuses (both naturally aborted (miscarried) and otherwise), we have many examples of fetuses at various stages of development. We know what happens at the various stages by dissection and direct evidence, not indirect evidence.
(To be clear, I think we're talking about a difference of a few weeks. From what I can recall, it would be about 6-7 weeks post gestation that there would be a truly functioning brain. That's about 8-9 weeks pregnant, as you know.)
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I pay a lot of attention to potential. The question of whether or not a fetus is truly alive in any sense when it's six weeks old doesn't really matter, because if you do what you're supposed to do, it WILL develop into a person.
If more than half of them do not survive even if one does what one is supposed to, would that make a difference to the argument?
[I ask because of the specific emphasis on "WILL," since that seems to indicate it is the fulcrum point for your argument.]
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quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: CT, since it's your gut-choice line, when does reticular formation typically occur?
The "formation" part is a noun, not a verb. It's also known as the "reticular activating system", and it doesn't occur at one point. It starts developing in a very primitive way at one point (of note, as above at a point where the activity is less organized than a protozoan eating) and becomes more fully developed over time.
Here is slippery language again. Depending on how you define the relevant point, it is somewhere between 10 and 23 weeks gestation. Both ends of the range are harder to defend -- I think the best argument is for somewhere in the middle.
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: If someone had a type of cancer that left them with a 50% chance of survival, would it be fair to call shooting them murder?
There's a big difference there. People sometimes spontaneously recover from cancer, even "terminal" cancer. No fetus has ever recovered, on its own, from a miscarriage.
Wait, so your only justification for thinking that someone with a 50% chance of surviving cancer deserves to live is that sometimes people survive cancer when doctors didn't think they would?
So what if there was a disease where this wasn't the case?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I pay a lot of attention to potential. The question of whether or not a fetus is truly alive in any sense when it's six weeks old doesn't really matter, because if you do what you're supposed to do, it WILL develop into a person.
If more than half of them do not survive even if one does what one is supposed to, would that make a difference to the argument?
[I ask because of the specific emphasis on "WILL," since that seems to indicate it is the fulcrum point for your argument.]
I suppose that depends on where the definition of pregnancy as a "natural" process lies.
Historically, women have had poor diets and no prenatal vitamins, but they still have kids. The difference, I suppose, between then and now is that we've dramatically cut down on infant mortality rates, but we've also cut down on pregnancy rates as well.
Nature has a selection process. Sometimes bad things happen, naturally, and they result in a miscarriage. Regardless of how many pregnancies end in natural miscarriages, there's still a difference between the natural and the artificial.
There's a difference between someone dying of cancer and someone being murdered. Is it a fair argument to say that, since nature comes up with ways to kill us all the time, it's perfectly fine for us to kill each other? I think someone arguing against my main point would come back to a fundamental disagreement about what murder means in this context, because they take issue with where life begins in any meaningful way. But like I said, I don't see the difference. A natural miscarriage, to me, is the same force of nature as cancer is. Someone trying to argue their way out of this by using the "but natural miscarriages happen all the time!" argument has to apply it all the way. Natural deaths happen constantly to people of all ages, genders and races, but we're still charged with murder when we attempt to do the same thing ourselves.
And as a side question, are miscarriage rates really that high? It doesn't change my argument, but I didn't realize they were.
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You say, "If we do what we're supposed to do, it will..." My question for you is, how do we decide what it is we're supposed to do? Isn't that decision going to be pretty arbitrary? Are we supposed to let nature take its course, come what may? No medical care until the midwife, then. Are we supposed to use every available means to protect and eventually birth the fetus, period? Then no abortions for mothers who are pregnant with children who will likely be stillborn, or even kill or maim the mothers themselves during labor. Personally, I probably do tend a bit closer in ideals on this question to you than to many other participants in this question...but I don't know how we decide what we're 'supposed' to do as though it were some factual baseline.
A parasite can, depending on the definition, develop into a human with all the qualifiers you mentioned. You're using as a part of your argument, "A fetus isn't a parasite because it's got the potential to be human." That suggests that humanity is an on/off status. Something either is human, or it isn't. It seems you know, but I fail to see why anyone else should be equally convinced.
Why is having an abortion at certain points in a pregnancy something we're simply not supposed to do, as a default? Why is it outside the gray area, as a given?
There are varying levels of "what we're supposed to do," I guess. We don't look at women in the third world without access to proper medical care and food sources and say what bad mothers they are. Yet they still manage to carry pregnancies to term.
As I've said before, if the life of the mother is in danger, then I don't see a moral problem with an artificial abortion. My personal code of morality doesn't compel pregnant women to sacrifice themselves for the chance of saving their problematic child. It is, once again, a natural consequence.
So what are we supposed to do? I'm not a doctor, especially not one specializing in pregnancies. But babies have been born for generations without the intensive effort we put into making pregnancies even safer. So what are we supposed to do? Take care of our bodies as best we can, as best we know how, and not abort our children. Seems like a pretty good baseline to me.
Wait, how do parasites have the potential to become human? Short of billions of years of evolution, parasites do not spontaneously develop sentience. And how isn't any species status a binary state? You either are a human, or you aren't. The same way you're a raccoon, or you aren't. Parasites are parasites, not humans. Tumors cannot become functional human beings.
It's outside the gray area because there might be some wriggle room to discuss appropriate or neglectful behavior during a pregnancy. But there's a pretty big difference between asking "is it child abuse to not take your prenatal vitamins" and "is it child abuse to kill the fetus before it has a chance to grow up?" A child can potentially survive poor behavior from the pregnant mother. It can't survive an abortion.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ... My personal code of morality doesn't compel pregnant women to sacrifice themselves for the chance of saving their problematic child. It is, once again, a natural consequence.
Can you further explain this step? Which is a "natural" consequence, dying in childbirth/complications or aborting a potentially dangerous pregnancy?
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Lyrhawn, unless I am wrong and you are a woman, I would appreciate it if you stopped referring to "we" when talking about what women are "supposed" to do. Yes, "we" have been having babies without prenatal care or good nutrition since the dawn of time and, quite often, "we" ended up dead. Or old before "our" time from the wear and tear on "our" bodies.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Lyrhawn, unless I am wrong and you are a woman, I would appreciate it if you stopped referring to "we" when talking about what women are "supposed" to do. Yes, "we" have been having babies without prenatal care or good nutrition since the dawn of time and, quite often, "we" ended up dead. Or old before "our" time from the wear and tear on "our" bodies.
quote:And as a side question, are miscarriage rates really that high? It doesn't change my argument, but I didn't realize they were.
When large samples of women are monitored by blood hormone levels, a lot more pregnancies are detected. It's not uncommon to be irregular in general or to feel a little out of sorts and be "late" few or more weeks -- but to actually be in early pregnancy without realizing it.
When assayed by blood levels to diagnose pregnancies that might be otherwise missed, about 60-70% of diagnosable pregnancies spontaneously miscarry.
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The argument that something should be permitted to happen because unless interfered with, it WILL happen is a far different one than the distinction between natural and artificial. It's okay to make both of them, but it might be confusing to emphasize one as a foundational claim for an argument if its truth value is, in fact, irrelevant.
I don't find the belief that natural things are good and artificial ones are bad at all compelling in medicine. I do so many unnatural things: cut into flesh, stitch it up, inject various and sundry medications, prescribe other drugs, stick a plastic and metal scope up someone's bum, etc. Even participate in the giving of medications (chemtherapy) that has its own strong chance of more bad effect than good, even to being lethal.
Of course, one could say that it is only in the case of continuing a pregnancy that the distinction is important, but that seems rather ad hoc. It also ignores the many artificial things that may be done to maintain a pregnancy (sewing shut the cervix, IV medication, various surgeries, etc) -- are they also bad because they are artificial?
Or is it only in the case that one is ending the pregnancy that "artificial" becomes wrong? If so, it's getting even more of an ad hoc flavor.
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quote:There are varying levels of "what we're supposed to do," I guess. We don't look at women in the third world without access to proper medical care and food sources and say what bad mothers they are. Yet they still manage to carry pregnancies to term.
That wasn't quite my point. My point was that the standard 'what we're supposed to do' is in constant flux. Some women are supposed to work hard and exercise right up until they give birth. Some women are supposed to take things easy, don't get stressed and physicall exerted. Some women are supposed to get regular medical care right up to, through, and following birth-from specialists dealing with pregnancies, no less. Some women are supposed to go to the local wise woman. Some women are supposed to breast-feed after giving birth, some women are supposed to use formula.
'What we're supposed to do' appears to be one of your core arguments. Your reasoning is as follows, "If mothers do what they're supposed to do, this is what follows, and therefore that outcome is what's desireable, and other outcomes should be prevented." The problem is, what we're supposed to do changes. Constantly. It really depends on context. There's not some obvious, factual starting point even though there seems to be one for some of us right now, in the present. A hundred years ago, you were supposed to have a pretty solid chance of dying if you caught certain diseases, and you were supposed to go on a long vacation if you had a bastard child, and come back having left the kid somewhere.
This standard you're using isn't a given, because it involves, well, current standards of medical technology. Or if it is a given, you need to do a much better job of establishing that.
quote:As I've said before, if the life of the mother is in danger, then I don't see a moral problem with an artificial abortion. My personal code of morality doesn't compel pregnant women to sacrifice themselves for the chance of saving their problematic child. It is, once again, a natural consequence.
Why not? Speaking strictly in terms of what is 'supposed' to happen, we wouldn't even know the mother's life is in danger in many such pregnancies and if we did, we wouldn't have the means to address it except perhaps a cup of poison or something.
quote:So what are we supposed to do? I'm not a doctor, especially not one specializing in pregnancies. But babies have been born for generations without the intensive effort we put into making pregnancies even safer. So what are we supposed to do? Take care of our bodies as best we can, as best we know how, and not abort our children. Seems like a pretty good baseline to me.
You don't know that they're children. The operative words in this paragraph are 'to me'. And that sets aside the problem of the 'our' in this case being accurate, but one party being much more invested in the 'our' than the other. Specifically, one group is-biologically speaking-an observer. They don't have a horse in the race, not in terms of their own bodies. The other party does. I don't know if fetuses are children or when they become children (I believe it happens sometime before birth, myself), but I do know that one party's bioligically involved and the other is an observer.
That's not much against the death of children, if it's happening...but it is something against the death of we-don't-knows.
quote: Wait, how do parasites have the potential to become human? Short of billions of years of evolution, parasites do not spontaneously develop sentience. And how isn't any species status a binary state? You either are a human, or you aren't. The same way you're a raccoon, or you aren't. Parasites are parasites, not humans. Tumors cannot become functional human beings.
It depends on how you define your words. You're defining 'human' as 'anything that has the potential, someday, to become human'. That includes, strangely enough, "An organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment." You can guess where I pasted that quote from.
quote:It's outside the gray area because there might be some wriggle room to discuss appropriate or neglectful behavior during a pregnancy. But there's a pretty big difference between asking "is it child abuse to not take your prenatal vitamins" and "is it child abuse to kill the fetus before it has a chance to grow up?" A child can potentially survive poor behavior from the pregnant mother. It can't survive an abortion.
Again, you're using a host of uncertain terms as though they're clear-cut, and arguing from those terms as though they've been established. A child cannot survive an abortion. It also cannot survive the deadly environs of Necron-234, which may or may not exist. It might not be a child.
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What kmbboots described is a big part of the reason I'm wary of my own assumptions about abortion, which are as I've said probably closer to Lyrhawn's than many people here. I'm wary of them because they amount to my saying, "Hey! Hey you guys! You need to do this thing in this way...never mind that I don't, can't, and won't ever speak from experience and that I won't ever be subject to the physical consequences of my suggestions."
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quote:Or is it only in the case that one is ending the pregnancy that "artificial" becomes wrong? If so, it's getting even more of an ad hoc flavor.
Or someone could come along and rephrase what I was flailing at in paragraphs and paragraphs in a simple, clearly-stated question. Hmph!
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Ha! Your compliment is a balm to my surly soul.
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On another front, I want to make something clear: Lyrhawn, I have a great deal of respect for your passion and thoughtfulness about the topic. (As with Dagonee's.) I disagree, but I don't want that to come across as impatence or surliness with you or your ideas.
I am very, very glad to see such a hot button issue discussed in such a manner. Thank you for that. I am reading you carefully. It is a topic I have read and thought a lot about, but I still will always have much to learn.
Posts: 831 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Or someone could come along and rephrase what I was flailing at in paragraphs and paragraphs in a simple, clearly-stated question. Hmph!
I know. Don't you hate when she does that? Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
(rivka, sweetheart, you picked exactly the right moment for such kindness. It's moving day, and I feel about as efficient and effective as a squished slug. Thanks!)
Posts: 831 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I swear vengence on clutter. Never again will you darken my days in the time of moving. Fie! Fie on you!
Posts: 831 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
My ex-girlfriend nearly died from HELLP syndrome during the birth of her daughter. Her OB/Gyn told her she had a 50% chance of dying from this if she had another child. She and I had many coversations about having a child together. She was willing, but I was against it, because I didn't like the thought of putting her in a 50%-chance-of-death situation.
What if she had accidentally gotten pregnant, through a broken condom, or failed birth control pill? Would abortion be murder then? Hmm?
Lyrhawn, miscarriage rates are actually quite high. I've read that something like 50%+ of all pregnancies fail. Usually this happens so soon after fertilization that the woman may not even be aware that she was pregnant.
So I ask you again--would a miscarriage brought about by drug use or lack of good nutrition be murder?
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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