Abortion

[Storm]

What would make a single cell zygote magically more special than a single cell sperm or egg, or even a single cell bacteria?

Though I support abortion rights (as you well know), I also believe life begins at conception.

For me, the crucial difference is that a single cell zygote is going to be a person. An unfertalized egg isn't.

 

[Father Heathen]

Give an infant a home, put some food in the freezer, and everything it needs to survive in the house, leave for two weeks, and come back. It will not survive. You cannot base it on it's ability to live. Look at mental-retarded people, some can be 30 years old and still not able to survive on their own, does that make OK to kill them? Of course it does not, same with this in this case.

But they are self-aware beings capable of thoughts and emotions, unlike an embryo. The comparison is silly.

 

[Father Heathen]

Though I support abortion rights (as you well know), I also believe life begins at conception.

For me, the crucial difference is that a single cell zygote is going to be a person. An unfertalized egg isn't.

Yes, life begins at conception, but not personhood.

 

[Storm]

Yes, life begins at conception, but not personhood.

I don't know. I think "personhood" is a gradient, and I'm not comfortable drawing a hard line.

 

[gnomon]

Let's say a 9 year old girl was raped and her mom died earlier than this, her dad was a poor, drunk. The girl had nobody else but her dad in that poor hillbilly place. Let's say her dad was a farmer who lived in a town by other farmers. One day while her dad went to milk the cows, one of the neighbors raped her, and nine months later she was pregnant.

Would it be fine for her to get an abortion?

Yes.

Thus it has been written.

 

[Father Heathen]

Let's say a 24 year old woman who has been living with her boyfriend forgets to take a couple of her birth control pills. Her parents are both alive and all parties are living in decent housing and have jobs. The woman has friends and extended family living in close proximity as well.


One day her boyfriend comes home from work with a twinkle in his eye and she figures now's as good a time as any to give him the opportunity to closely inspect her nipple ring and her butterfly "tramp stamp." Due to her own absentminded behavior, she has forgotten to take her birth control pills a few times this month.

A few months later, she realizes she's pregnant, and...well, she just doesn't want to be.

Would it be fine for her to get an abortion?

Don't answer the question. That's not the point. My point is that whenever people want to justify abortion on demand, they use the worst possible scenarios. Most abortions are not performed due to rape, incest, or actual threat to the life of the mother.

That's still an excellent reason.

There is already more than enough unwanted children being raised by irresponsible parents.

 

[Father Heathen]

Bacteria is not a person...

Of course not, and neither is a zygote.

 

[Father Heathen]

I am sure the baby would feel otherwise...

The "baby" wouldn't have the capacity to form an opinion of the matter.

 

[gnomon]

Most abortions happen naturally. That is, considering that a miscarriage is "nature's" or rather "Gods" way of aborting fertilized eggs and it has been estimated that 30-50 percent of fertilized eggs are miscarried, or lost, or naturally aborted during the process of implantation or before. Following that some reports have placed the rate of miscarriage of implanted eggs up to 25% in the first six weeks.

Now, taking that, what is this miracle of birth in which every fertilized egg is a potential, soul filled human being designed by a higher power?

Also, how is it that the issue of women choosing to end pregnancies has become so important knowing that so many fertilized eggs never come to be?

 

[horizon_mj1]

Gnomon, I agree. People always like to think they are superior even to things of which they have no control. I guess nature should be held accountable for all of the "natural abortions"eh? After all is it not humans who choose the place and time of which life starts (if only)? It honestly blows my mind how some people honestly believe something without the capacity to live let alone think is credited with having a "soul". Just because humanity is so cruel does not mean that everything else is. We as a species would place the soul at conception, Nature (Creation, Evolution, God) place it when it can properly function as per creational need and that IMO is when to live as an independent organism is completed.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Let's say a 24 year old woman who has been living with her boyfriend forgets to take a couple of her birth control pills. Her parents are both alive and all parties are living in decent housing and have jobs. The woman has friends and extended family living in close proximity as well.


One day her boyfriend comes home from work with a twinkle in his eye and she figures now's as good a time as any to give him the opportunity to closely inspect her nipple ring and her butterfly "tramp stamp." Due to her own absentminded behavior, she has forgotten to take her birth control pills a few times this month.

A few months later, she realizes she's pregnant, and...well, she just doesn't want to be.

Would it be fine for her to get an abortion?

Don't answer the question. That's not the point. My point is that whenever people want to justify abortion on demand, they use the worst possible scenarios. Most abortions are not performed due to rape, incest, or actual threat to the life of the mother.

Though there has been little girls who were raped and had to have either abortions or child labor.

 

[Sunstone]

Is there an innocent baby in her, or is there a foetus? What qualities must an organism have to qualify for personhood or claim rights? Does a foetus have any of these?

I suspect the post-abortion remorse that Christians keep bringing up is largely either myth or the product of Christian propaganda.

Hell, Sey, you don't need a brain to vote Republican, why would you not consider a fetus the equivalent of a TV preacher these days? Not that I'm opposed to aborting TV preachers, though.

 

[Storm]

Let's say a 24 year old woman who has been living with her boyfriend forgets to take a couple of her birth control pills. Her parents are both alive and all parties are living in decent housing and have jobs. The woman has friends and extended family living in close proximity as well.


One day her boyfriend comes home from work with a twinkle in his eye and she figures now's as good a time as any to give him the opportunity to closely inspect her nipple ring and her butterfly "tramp stamp." Due to her own absentminded behavior, she has forgotten to take her birth control pills a few times this month.

A few months later, she realizes she's pregnant, and...well, she just doesn't want to be.

Would it be fine for her to get an abortion?

Yes. It's her choice.

Don't answer the question. That's not the point. My point is that whenever people want to justify abortion on demand, they use the worst possible scenarios.

Because to protect the right in worst case scenarios, you have to protect it for all.

Most abortions are not performed due to rape, incest, or actual threat to the life of the mother.

Source?

 

[blackout]

Kathryn,

Just because you can come up with some other example of a question,
is no reason not to answer the example put forth in the OP.

As we answer questions that challenge the boundaries
of what we believe/profess
we come to a better understanding of our own Selves,
our own thinking/thought process
and perhaps examine what we already think we know
in more depth.
Only to find that there is considerably more to consider
than we first considered.

 

[Sunstone]

Given the population problem, and its severity, I think the real issue is not whether we are going to have abortions, but whether we are going to reduce our populations through birth control, abortion, and such means as those -- or reduce them through starvation and wars for the earth's remaining resources.

Figure it out folks: Your choice soon enough may well be to abort a fetus or send your son to kill someone for their water or their oil. And, even if it doesn't get as evil as that until your grandchildren are born, that's the direction of things. In the end, life ain't about to give our species the options Walt Disney would give us.

 

[Sunstone]

I'd rather a woman decide for herself what she wants to do with her body than have a bunch of ******* politicians, preachers, pundits, and moral ******* boy-raping creeps like the Pope, impose that decision upon her in their high and mighty ways.

And if she aborts purely as a means of birth control, I don't give a damn. Fetuses have no more rights than kidneys, in my book.

 

[Revoltingest]

Let's say a 9 year old girl was raped and her mom died earlier than this, her dad was a poor, drunk. The girl had nobody else but her dad in that poor hillbilly place. Let's say her dad was a farmer who lived in a town by other farmers. One day while her dad went to milk the cows, one of the neighbors raped her, and nine months later she was pregnant.

Would it be fine for her to get an abortion?

Yup.
Tis simple as dirt for me.
Given all the diversity of opinion about whether the fetus has the rights of a human being, I'd err on the side of minimal government regulation.
This gives the decision to the mother, because the future ankle biter is part of her body.
Since it's her prerogative, & in the interest of voluntary relationships, I'd also give the father the right to vamoose.

 

[horizon_mj1]

Given the population problem, and its severity, I think the real issue is not whether we are going to have abortions, but whether we are going to reduce our populations through birth control, abortion, and such means as those -- or reduce them through starvation and wars for the earth's remaining resources.

Figure it out folks: Your choice soon enough may well be to abort a fetus or send your son to kill someone for their water or their oil. And, even if it doesn't get as evil as that until your grandchildren are born, that's the direction of things. In the end, life ain't about to give our species the options Walt Disney would give us.

What if our species creates a scenario for themselves that would force cannibalism for survival; then what?

 

[McBell]

What if our species creates a scenario for themselves that would force cannibalism for survival; then what?

um...
Fetuses will become a delicacy?

 

[bain-druie]

First, let me say I advocate the right of choice for the mother in every situation, out of sheer pragmatism. Women who are determined to have an abortion will find a way to do so, one way or another; it is far preferable to have this done in a clean, health-promoting environment.

As to the OP - yes, in my opinion, that's the best possible choice.

As to Kathryn's scenario - I don't believe it's morally right to kill for convenience, whether it's a fetus or a flower; however, better to let a selfish person abort than force that selfish person to be a parent. It's virtually guaranteed that kind of parent will be a very poor one, and a child does not deserve the misery of being unwanted and resented.