Real questions about pro choice

[brashbrother]

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Jogger,

First important distinction: a Trimester is 13 weeks.

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Read my post more carefully.

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Umm... I did. You refer to the 11th trimester and 12th trimester...what are you talking about there?

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Second: "Life" in this case is determined by the law to exist at 13 weeks, and (arbitrarily) to not exist at 12 weeks. As in, the taking of a life being murder, the removal of a 12 week fetus being "not murder."

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Read the very first paragraph of your own post more carefully, too.

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I apologize for the lack of clarity. I was juxtaposing the law and science, but I did not make it clear in my OP. The law uses its own definition of "life" to determine when a life is unjustly taken. i.e. You can't be prosecuted for murder for killing someone who is already dead, or in the case here, for killing something that is not considered "alive." So, given that the law arbitrarily chose 13 weeks along in the pregnancy to assign this distinction, where do you personally draw the line? And why?

One of your posts mentioned viability, which as I stated earlier, no fetus is viable earlier than 20 weeks along. The earliest known survival was born at about 22 weeks I believe, will have to check to be sure.

[gull]

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My argument is this: It is not possible to determine when *exactly* life begins, scientifically, anyway. [If you disagree with this point, please explain].


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I disagree. It is very possible to determine when life begins. It is entirely dependent on your definition of life.

Please explain why you think it's impossible to determine when *exactly* begins.

[vhawk01]

I'd say right up until birth. My pro-choice stance has nothing to do with determining when the fetus is 'alive' or not. And that is a ridiculous way of framing it, IMO. The fetus is alive all the time. I think what you are really asking is when it becomes a PERSON. All fetus' are alive, as are all sperm, all skin cells, all plants, bacteria, and so on. We kill living things all the time. I would even agree that all fetus' are humans, since they share our DNA. SOME pro-choicers would argue that they are not persons until some point, and they use less or more arbitrary guidelines for establishing personhood.

My pro-choice stance has nothing to do with personhood and everything to do with Thomson's violinist argument.

[brashbrother]

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I started a similar thread a while back

making decisions as to a solid cutoff when there are no demarcation points is one of the hardest thing for my mind to grapple..but these decisions must be made and they are made.

the age for the emancipation of children is equally or probably even more arbitrary than the abortion one.

the fact that there is no demarcation point in a person's life does not make it logical that we emancipate children as soon as they are born...(or concieved)

that is not to say that there aren't good reasons why conception should be a good point to consider a being to have full rights and priveleges...but the simple fact that there are no demarcation points thereafter is not enough to exclude other possibilities.

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I can think of two very obvious demarcation points: conception and birth. Seems like you are from the camp that says, we *have* to have abortion, so let's comeup with a timeline to make it palatable.

FYI, another interesting point determined by law is that a miscarriage/fetal death at 20 weeks or later requires a name, birth certificate, and official cremation or burial, etc.

Emancipation of children is much foggier, I agree. We do *have* to emancipate our kids, so yes, we do have to find some way to make that distinction. IMO, it is altogether different from abortion in that emancipating is identifying a cultural distinction, but does not have the potential to end a human life form.

[vhawk01]

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I started a similar thread a while back

making decisions as to a solid cutoff when there are no demarcation points is one of the hardest thing for my mind to grapple..but these decisions must be made and they are made.

the age for the emancipation of children is equally or probably even more arbitrary than the abortion one.

the fact that there is no demarcation point in a person's life does not make it logical that we emancipate children as soon as they are born...(or concieved)

that is not to say that there aren't good reasons why conception should be a good point to consider a being to have full rights and priveleges...but the simple fact that there are no demarcation points thereafter is not enough to exclude other possibilities.

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I can think of two very obvious demarcation points: conception and birth. Seems like you are from the camp that says, we *have* to have abortion, so let's comeup with a timeline to make it palatable.

FYI, another interesting point determined by law is that a miscarriage/fetal death at 20 weeks or later requires a name, birth certificate, and official cremation or burial, etc.

Emancipation of children is much foggier, I agree. We do *have* to emancipate our kids, so yes, we do have to find some way to make that distinction. IMO, it is altogether different from abortion in that emancipating is identifying a cultural distinction, but does not have the potential to end a human life form.

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I think if you want to be taken seriously in abortion debates you should refrain from low-meaning, high-emotion phrases like 'potential to end a human life form.' It may make your points more dramatic to idiots who can't comprehend and just react on emotion, but it is a meaningless phrase for people who can rationally think about issues. Most of us on this forum are the latter. Nearly everything has the potential to end a human life form. Certainly, scratching and washing your hair.

[brashbrother]

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My argument is this: It is not possible to determine when *exactly* life begins, scientifically, anyway. [If you disagree with this point, please explain].


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I disagree. It is very possible to determine when life begins. It is entirely dependent on your definition of life.

Please explain why you think it's impossible to determine when *exactly* begins.

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Sorry to confuse, I personally describe human life as beginning at conception, but I assumed that people would see that as my opinion. I agree it depends on your own definition, and to have a place to begin the discussion, I made that generalization.

I should have said, "I believe life begins at conception, so any abortion to me is wrong. Since I know many of you do not start from that premise, I am curious to know what your starting point is, and why?"

[Brom]

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IMO, it is altogether different from abortion in that emancipating is identifying a cultural distinction, but does not have the potential to end a human life form.

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Surely emancipating a one day old baby is nothing short of a death certificate. Emancipation is very similar to abortions in that respect IMO.

I do have a comment to make on the scale of times when abortions should be legal (if at all). It seems to me that one can't very well measure the exact second that conception took place at. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you the minute or hour even. It only becomes feasible on the scale of days or weeks.

I'm basically saying something like 13 weeks is far superior than saying the cut-off should be 2000 hours or something like that. Unless one has some kind of real-time monitoring system on the fetus to test it and say "Oh this baby is technically alive, we can't abort at this point".

[Prodigy54321]

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I started a similar thread a while back

making decisions as to a solid cutoff when there are no demarcation points is one of the hardest thing for my mind to grapple..but these decisions must be made and they are made.

the age for the emancipation of children is equally or probably even more arbitrary than the abortion one.

the fact that there is no demarcation point in a person's life does not make it logical that we emancipate children as soon as they are born...(or concieved)

that is not to say that there aren't good reasons why conception should be a good point to consider a being to have full rights and priveleges...but the simple fact that there are no demarcation points thereafter is not enough to exclude other possibilities.

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I can think of two very obvious demarcation points: conception and birth. Seems like you are from the camp that says, we *have* to have abortion, so let's comeup with a timeline to make it palatable.

FYI, another interesting point determined by law is that a miscarriage/fetal death at 20 weeks or later requires a name, birth certificate, and official cremation or burial, etc.

Emancipation of children is much foggier, I agree. We do *have* to emancipate our kids, so yes, we do have to find some way to make that distinction. IMO, it is altogether different from abortion in that emancipating is identifying a cultural distinction, but does not have the potential to end a human life form.

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why does the formation of a zygote seem like such a big step to some poeple? Why moreso than a specific number of cells? or maybe the beginnings of a brain?

cenception is less of a logical demarcation point than any of those IMO.

[brashbrother]

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I started a similar thread a while back

making decisions as to a solid cutoff when there are no demarcation points is one of the hardest thing for my mind to grapple..but these decisions must be made and they are made.

the age for the emancipation of children is equally or probably even more arbitrary than the abortion one.

the fact that there is no demarcation point in a person's life does not make it logical that we emancipate children as soon as they are born...(or concieved)

that is not to say that there aren't good reasons why conception should be a good point to consider a being to have full rights and priveleges...but the simple fact that there are no demarcation points thereafter is not enough to exclude other possibilities.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can think of two very obvious demarcation points: conception and birth. Seems like you are from the camp that says, we *have* to have abortion, so let's comeup with a timeline to make it palatable.

FYI, another interesting point determined by law is that a miscarriage/fetal death at 20 weeks or later requires a name, birth certificate, and official cremation or burial, etc.

Emancipation of children is much foggier, I agree. We do *have* to emancipate our kids, so yes, we do have to find some way to make that distinction. IMO, it is altogether different from abortion in that emancipating is identifying a cultural distinction, but does not have the potential to end a human life form.

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I think if you want to be taken seriously in abortion debates you should refrain from low-meaning, high-emotion phrases like 'potential to end a human life form.' It may make your points more dramatic to idiots who can't comprehend and just react on emotion, but it is a meaningless phrase for people who can rationally think about issues. Most of us on this forum are the latter. Nearly everything has the potential to end a human life form. Certainly, scratching and washing your hair.

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Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by that? Scratching and washing your hair?

I was not trying to bring emotions in, I was just trying to say that emancipating children and aborting a fetus are very different arguments. Most importantly in that we have to do the former, but we do not have to do the latter.

[vhawk01]

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IMO, it is altogether different from abortion in that emancipating is identifying a cultural distinction, but does not have the potential to end a human life form.

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Surely emancipating a one day old baby is nothing short of a death certificate. Emancipation is very similar to abortions in that respect IMO.

I do have a comment to make on the scale of times when abortions should be legal (if at all). It seems to me that one can't very well measure the exact second that conception took place at. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you the minute or hour even. It only becomes feasible on the scale of days or weeks.

I'm basically saying something like 13 weeks is far superior than saying the cut-off should be 2000 hours or something like that. Unless one has some kind of real-time monitoring system on the fetus to test it and say "Oh this baby is technically alive, we can't abort at this point".

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Exactly, and this puts the lie to the idea that "The only legitimate boundaries are birth and conception." Face it, there ARE no boundaries...this is typical in biology. ANY line you draw will be inexact, although not necessarily 'arbitrary.' The pro-lifers enjoy pretending conception is a hard and fast instant because it lends their side the soothing, simplistic benefit of discreteness. Its an illusion.