Abortion

You have some misconceptions, my friend, abortion doesn't not stop ignorant people from breeding. Ignorant people, sick people, retarded people, can still breed freely, abortion does not play a role in preventing this. And it never will.

And for "quality instead of quantity" comment... who's to decide the quality?
Who's to decide who can be born and who cannot be born? You? Me?

Can you really say abortion is NOT a selfish choice? Can you tell me that, if you were aborted, (hypothetically assume you had a conscience long enough to have an opinion) you would be happy that your mother was given FREE choice to do so?

If anyone here says "YES I'll accept being aborted, just because I think my mother should be given the choice." -- Then I will admit that you have a well-founded opinion. But if you cannot admit to this, then it's selfishness. Let bad things happen to others, but not to yourself?

So called "Rogue" economist Steve Levitt does discuss studies that have indicated possible connections between abortions and lower crime rates in his popular book Freakonomics. Obviously this is a very controversial and unexplored area, especially from the vantage point that is taken in Levitt's book. I myself have not actually read the studies, I am only aware of their existence, hence I will not comment any further on the matter.

I believe abortion is morally wrong because it is rather wanton destruction of human life. First off, wanton destruction of any life should be avoided, secondly this is human life. Detracters have argued that feti are not human, but I think that, seeing as a fetus, when left to its natural growth patterns, will almost certainly become human, such an argument is tenuous. Conception seems to me the most logical place to start qualifying a fetus as human, since the major event that was required to ensure that the cells in question would eventually become what is generally agreed on as human has already occurred. If the carrier of the fetus proceeds to live a normal life, the fetus will almost certainly become human.

Legally, the argument seems to spring from the idea that feti are not human and not citizens, thus they do not have human rights. I believe this is flawed for the reasons I stated above.

In a rebutle to *Whitelion* I understand where your coming from but, in reality morality is a subjective term and can be applied by anyone to anything. Everyone has their own "morales" some have more than others. Some have none at all. Anyways...

I vote pro choice on abortion for the sake that in my eyes a fetus isn't born because birth wasn't given. Sure, it was conceived but, birth is a different story. I'm undecided on late term abortions because at a certain point I believe that the fetus is actually close to humanity. For every time someone says "if you abort the person could become a productive member of society" as their reason against it. You need to also think that the person could also become a criminal or even take the life of a productive member of society. Every single one of us thought as we were kids of growing up to be the president, becoming a fireman, a policemen, race card driver,etc,etc but, so did every child growing up we just can't know ahead of time what the fetus will grow up to be so that argument is going nowhere.

For rape victims or those who suffered from incest (involuntary) then abortion should be a possibility. Why ruin the lives of two people? Why bring the child into this world when the mother will look at the child and only be reminded about such an event? Its not fair for the child to have a parent that would despise them and its not fair to the person who has to have the daily reminder of the worst thing to happen to them.

The area where I disagree with pro choice is the mommies and daddies who have some slutty daughter who gets knocked up starting at 8th grade (i've seen several of those) and just uses abortion as a counter to their idiotic behavior. The possibility of abortion should never be taken off the table because of someones Christian views. I point out Christian because 90% of those against it quote scripture as their logic. We as a people should have a choice and if you don't want to do it then keep your beliefs but, don't push your beliefs on others.

On another note, those who say abortion is murder need to look up the legal definition. Murder can only be committed on a human and a fetus isn't quite a "human" as we see it just yet. Once the fetus reaches late term then we can begin to give it the title of "human".

(I'm lazy tonight and don't want to read 22 other post...)
I am far against it. Abortion is just like murder, no matter what anyone else says. (Which is odd because I'm for justified killings...but with abortions the child doesn't get to speak for itself so it isn't at all justified!)
I can't understand why people would want to do it. I mean to give life is a precious gift. Why take it away?

Well then your average child would take a while to become human, and infanticide should be fine, because, even after birth, the baby can't survive on its own for years.

I personally don't see what blood has to do with anything. A human level of intelligence(i.e, learning capacity, self awareness, the ability to comprehend the abstract) should be the criteria for defining something as "human"(or if we consider possible AI or non-human intelligent life forms, having the same rights that we give to humans). Babies obviously have high capacity for learning. It is hard to saw whether a baby is self aware, but even if it does not start out so, self awareness develops quickly. Obviously, this intelligence does not suddenly appear the second a baby exits the womb. It develops during the pregnancy. It also would logically develops along a continuum. At what point do we deem this "intelligence" to have reached a threshold required to for humanity? Obviously, there is not really a good way to resolve this dilemma. All restrictions we have come up with(partial birth abortions, etc.) are arbitrary, and often vague. It seems to me that the only logical point to start considering the fetus as human is at conception, because, if left to natural devices, it gradually develops "human intelligence." An unfertilized egg or sperm cell would not count as human because they will not develop "human intelligence" when left to their natural devices until a certain specific requirement is met.

I fail to see how your spew of anti-religious sentiment advances your argument. As you have just seen, I put forth a logical argument against abortion without referencing the Bible, the Quaran, or any other "sacred" source.



Whether you believe in absolute morals or not, it is clear that our society and even constitution have a set of morals built into them. To prevent the anarchy that would result from relying only on guilt to govern peoples' actions, we all agree to abide by these morals(or else suffer the punishment). Our constitution is also constructed such that it considers some morals be "above" mere majority rule.(The relevant "moral" here being that no person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.) Thus, what various people may believe is morally right does not influence the collective morality of abortion.

What does influence it, as you state later, is whether the fetus is human and can be considered a "person."

Edit: I realized, I should have precisely defined "morals" before proceeding. I will define a moral as "a truth that governs how one judges the value of an action."

Finally, I am compelled to point out the logical flaw inherent in moral relativism. First of all, moral relativism is an absolute moral(since it is always "correct"). Therefore, one can create a system based on moral relativism, but it is ineffective. Since it is impossible to classify decisions made by anyone other than yourself as moral or immoral, you are left with the following options.

Everyone has the right to act on their own morals, regardless of the effects on other people in respect to their moralities.

OR

Everyone has the right to the treatment afforded by their own moralities, regardless of what other people may think.

The first system is anarchy. The second system requires that everyone involved or affected by an action agree with that action, which rarely, if ever, happens.

The only way to create an effective system of interaction is to assume, as we do, that there exists at least one absolute moral. Even if you disagree and say that no absolute morals exist, you have contradicted yourself, because the postulation that no absolute morals exist is an absolute moral.

Therefore, moral relativism is logically inconsistent, unless one provides a different definition of "morals", or uses a different system of thought.

Well I suppose the blood thing is your belief on the matter, which differs from mine. However, you still have the problem of development along a continuum. The blood and veins don't all magically appear at once, they develop gradually. I suppose you could posit a test that detects the presence of blood before deciding whether it should be allowed to abort in each individual case. I just happen to believe that the criteria of "blood flow" is not a good one.



I would say the opposite. I addressed your pro-abortion points and dismissed the anti-religious stuff because it was irrelevant. It is true that the problems you mention are real. But from the other point of view, at least the baby gets a chance at life. It's a matter of conflicting interests/morals. I just think the moral of the baby having the right to have a chance at life supercedes the other morals at stake. Additionally, although people like to bring up the rape scenario, it accounts for only a very small percentage of abortions. Thus, if we were to allow an exception for rape, the vast majority of all abortions would be prevented, which is, as I see things, a major step in the right direction.



Of course it won't survive. You have taken it out of its natural environment and disrupted the natural development of the fetus. I suppose physically it is a part of the mother, but I also believe that the fact that it will become a separate entity if left to its natural development should influece the way we view it. Also, pretty much everyone can agree that at a very late stage in the pregnancy, while the baby is physically part of the mother, it has developed its own seperate consciousness, which much be taken into consideration.



Such is the danger of not precisely defining what you mean. People will interpret your arguments at face value.

That aside, why make the exception for a provision of normal nutrition? The child/baby is still dependent on another person for survival.



Yes, we can analyze what is occurring during fetal development, from a biological perspective. However, in order to be able to make the judgement calls that you propose, we need to be able to precisely and definitively define what it means to think, and what it means to be human, which has not, and most likely never will happen. The nature of thought has been at the center of philosophy for millenia. If we must err, err on the side of caution and preservation.



Your argument that many animals are smarter than humans for the first year is absolutely untrue if we consider "smart" to mean "intelligence", as I said. Animals have more instinctive behaviors, and thus can survive independently sooner, but are far outclassed by even many "brain damaged" humans in intelligence, that is, the ability to learn and adapt.

I think that in order to fall out of my definition, one would have to be completely brain dead, assuming of course, that we are able to determine that for certain.

Having dispatched of that fallacy, I don't see why my criteria for determining something to be human is not a possible criteria. You idea of "blood flow" is also a possible criteria, I just do not think it is the one we should be using.

There is no reason blood could not theoretically be used as a criteria using a sort of binary test. I think we just have to agree that we disagree about the significance of blood.



What do you mean by logic? Morals outweigh other morals, at least if you accept some semblance of my definition of morals. You cannot claim to not be promoting some morality, a different morality than the one I am promoting yes, but still a morality.



The problem remains, how do you measure consciousness, and what is the required threshold?



Why is this the "logical" break? The child still can't survive truly independently. While the reasoning may be obvious to you since you accept it, I think the logical break is somewhere else, for reasons I have explained, and thus need this explicated.



This would still require the formulation of an arbitrary and probably controversial definition of consciousness. The only solution I see would be to say that

IF brain activity = 0, then consciousness does not exist
ELSE consciousness does exist.

Which eliminates the need to quantify consciousness, only certify that it exists at all. However, this methodology would be difficult to apply to actual situations.



I'd like to see your sources on that. I am pretty sure even human infants have mental processing power and learning capabilities better than any animal. If they ever don't, surely by even age 1 year they do.

With regards to EQ, first of all, it can be a somewhat dubious measure of brain power. Secondly, you seem to have assumed that 5 is close to 7.

From a purely numerical perspective, 5 might or might not be close to 7, depending on the scope of what you are looking at. When considering all the numbers from 1 to 4 billion, 5 and 7 are pretty close. However, if you are considering all the numbers from 4 to 8, 5 and 7 are pretty far apart.

Now consider that humans have one of the highest EQs. I will be generous and assume that out of the EQs of all known organisms we are considering, the range is 0(a tree or something) to 9(some really high EQ animal). The gap between 5 and 7 represents then 20% of the total possible difference on the EQ scale. Not all that close, I'd say. Supposing we discovered some super intelligent being with and EQ of 3 million, then yes, with respect to that, humans and dolphins would be close, but when we consider the practical scope of the things we are looking at here, I don't think it is accurate to say humans and dolphins are close in EQ. Of course the significance of this depends on the accuracy of EQ in measuring intelligence anyway.

To look at it in a more "normal" way, we simply observe that humans have come up with civilation, writing, mathematics, philosophy, tools, abstract ideas, and many other things. Dolphins have not. It seems like it's a pretty big difference to me.

My point was a little unclear, I didn't really mean it as a means of population control. The thing is, if ignorant, sick, retarded or even perfectly normal people get pregnant and then want to abort their babies, then I'm not gonna say no. Unless I can get a 100% guarantee that they won't screw up raising the baby and said baby will be good for the world. Sadly, no such guarantee exists.

Who's to decide who can be born and who cannot be born? Ideally, a panel of family planning experts, psychologists, DNA analysts, doctors, and any other specialist you can think of suited to predicting the future success or failure of a child. Unfortunately, that's quite a bit of trouble to go through, so I think it should be the parents decision. The final decision should be the woman's (btw, have ANY females weighed in on this topic yet, seems to me we are lacking an important point of view). Yes, it's far far far far from perfect, but it's not a perfect world eh?

Abortion can be a selfish choice, but not having one can be a selfish choice as well. If an obviously unfit-to-be-parents couple already on welfare decide to go ahead and have that second set of triplets because, heck, the government will feed them, that's just an extra drain on our resources. That sounds pretty selfish to me, so if they want to have an abortion, I'm fine with it. Honestly though, how many of the choices we make are purely unselfish? If you look hard enough theres usually always an element of "me me me, it's good for me!" in any choice we make.

I freely admit that I do not value life in general as much as the people who voted that "Yes, abortion is wrong". I suppose it just gets down to how high you want to set the bar. Would you be hardcore pro-life enough to say "You know, I'm not going to have this brain tumor removed because cells are living things. Even though their uninhibited growth will eventually kill me, I accept it." Mine is set lower than that, low enough to say "No abortion is not wrong".

wow..well i think its still up to the parents, to many people that really cant handle being parents are having kids, and ruining their lives. i have a couple of friends that had kids and take care of them so they went to foster care..

aren't we talking about abortion?


just put it this way: it's immoral, but it's necessary

isn't killing people immoral too?

aren't the Hebrews of the Old Testament vengeful and are war freaks?


whether or not a fetus is a person, has a soul, or whatever it is, it doesn't really matter

...it shouldn't matter at all

I stated my argument in the very first post I made in this thread, but to go into more detail, I think that not destroying human life is beneficial because it is beneficial for humans to have a right to life. This fact is pretty much undisputed(thought if you wish to dispute it go ahead. I'm willing to take up that argument). Assuming this, if one believes, as I do, that feti qualify as human, then the benefit of no abortions is clear.

As for the benefits of abortions that you list, people are starting to study such conventional wisdom, but the evidence is currently tenuous.



No it's not. I'm asking for you to explain why you think that is the logical break and more importantly, why deem your so called "independent survival" so important.



You could make some sweeping statements, but there will always be a grey area, and within that grey area, you need either an arbitrary definition or a precise test. Estimates aren't good enough when considering destroying something that, even under this pretense, could possibly be human.



You are looking at it completely wrong. I said the distance between 5 and 7 represents 20% of the TOTAL DISTANCE on the scale. (It might be noted additionally that your math is wrong. Since EQ is a ratio, 7 is 40% larger than 5. Actually, 7 is always 40% larger than 5, ratios or not). Think of is this way: suppose you are playing a board game in which you have to move forward ten squares to win. If you get to move 2 squares forward, that's a significant distance toward your goal, 20% of the way. Now imagine another board game. In this one, you get to move forward 1000 squares but you need to advance 10^512 squares to win. In this game, the move of 1000 squares is almost insignificant. Your argument for dolphins being almost as smart as humans depended on the idea that 5 was close to 7. Whether you considered the scale, or you think 5 is always close to 7, I don't know. What I am trying to demonstrate is that the closeness of two numbers doesn't make any sense in the abstract. You have to consider the set of values you are working with, and considering that EQ of known organisms only goes from 0 to say 8 or 10, a difference of 2 is large.

Also, you can't directly translate EQ to IQ the way you are doing. EQ is a measure of brain mass against body mass. IQ is something that is supposed to be (mental age)/(physical age), which tests attempt to determine.

Suppose we assume that you are correct and that a dolphin is more intelligent than a 1 year old(I need to do more research and we need to come to a better consensus on what intelligence is before continuing that argument). Then why don't we say "since this baby is not as intelligent as a dolphin, it is expendable and can be killed legally, since it does not meet the intelligence criteria to classify as 'human levek'" or something. Obviously that is unreasonable, and I think we have to consider what the baby will become if it develops naturally when attempting to assign such values.

Oh, I had sex. Why is my belly is getting big. I don't want this 'thing' for 9 months, I had absolutely no IDEA that unprotected sex may directly result into pregnancy.

Hmm, I know! I'll just kill 'IT'. I can't be bothered right now.

Love the way you put it. Because thats what alot of teenagers think when they get pregnant. Sadly enough as it is. My chic thought she was pregnant at one point(we were...idk i was 15 she was about to be 17...we've been together for about 6-7years) and we never thought about abortion. We were scared as hell, but we would NEVER do that. I was still in high school she was about to get out, we had no one to turn to, but we still would have rather been parents then kill what child we might have had.

I think I've already established that I don't have any problem with the abortion here. I am, however, concerned that the girl's education is lacking. If she's stupid to boot, then hey, one less (most likely) dumb baby to grow up to be (most likely )a dumb human.

The mother education lacks, so the baby will be born dumb?
I find it a little odd that one would insult another for being stupid, when carrying around a misconception like "education is inherited from the parents" -- You made me laugh. Almost.