Is "killing" a fetus and murdering someone the same?

No, and I will also say that I do not believe it should be the same as "killing" a baby that is under 10 weeks old.

Why 10 weeks? That is just me taking a guess at when self consciousness begins to develop in a baby. Ofcourse, to tell the truth I would also say that killing an elephant is the same as killing a human, due to this development of self consciousness.

So yeah, unless there is something I am overlooking, to me it just seems we are over idealizing our own species. Hmm, though I could see killing a baby after birth having some kind of penalty like animal curelty if it was done in a non-humane way.

Also, just wanted to say that I do not have a thing for killing babies. This was just what I have been thinking since this entire topic came up some time ago. I just really don't understand the "pro-life" argument.

Allow me to simplify: Unless there's some magical way we don't know, Humans are born through intercourse. When that process takes place lawfully, between two consenting people they generally should know(and hopefully in fact anticipate the 'consequences')

To "Abort" a fetus, is obviously to participate in murder. It's not merely a blob of cells, it is a bio organic lifeform that's attempting to materalize!

Let's draw a direct comparison, and make it so blatantly obvious even a pro choicer would concur: A bird guards its nest, filled with eggs. If an animal or a person were to try to take those eggs, the mother bird would do all it could to defend it.

I'll go even further: The act of Abortion is Infanticide! Its irrationality can only be justified in paux-supremacy. Supremacy that in my mind doesn't exist between two beings.

To support abortion, is to support discrimination of all kind. If we can discriminate against the origins of life, then life itself has no meaning and anyone living in this planet has no "inherent" rights or anything
at all.

Spot on, there is no one who has inherent rights. Humans make rights to make society livable but there are no natural rights

I will just assume this is true for now. This is definitely not always the case, but that is why exceptions exist. Not agreeing with this would throw the conversation off topic too much.



The problem is, to me it is not obviously murder. To me a "blob of cells" and "a bio organic lifeform that's attempting to materalize!" is approximately equivalent.



I will agree that this would happen. Though, I do not see how this would help your argument.



Do you mean that there does not exist a supremacy between you and everyday bacteria? Do you regret cleaning your living area?



Not discriminating against anything would make living fairly impossible. Not even Vegens can go without eating plants.

----

Sorry, I seemed to have completely missed the point of your argument here. I would really like to responses if at all possible. I did sort of like the "pro-life" argument at first, mainly just because of the name, but I really don't understand where it is coming from.

Thank you for all of your hardwork, and sorry that I could not understand the argument you were trying to make.

Allow me to clarify: An Egg is the rough animal equivalent to the fetus(or hell even the Zygote). The bird, for its part chooses not to eat the egg. This is because the bird largely believes in the sanctity of its own life. The parenting birds don't even think of the possibility of "aborting" the child.

The parent views the surrogate child as an equal, if not actually superior to the extent that the child deserves and needs care in order to grow into a full fledged adult.

The abortionist, twists nature into its opposite course. Whereas natural selection deems a healthy child worthy of birth, the abortionist indiscriminately butchers new prospective human life.

It's a crime against Humanity, and the result will be undermanned families on a collective scale(this is already happening). As well as a crime against morality.

We may be conscious today, but our organism and the base of our bodies are no different from when we were nine months old. In other words, I'll make the philosophical argument that to support abortion, is to support murder.

Bullshit, chickens will eat their own eggs if they get used to the taste. A lot of male animals kill their offspring in order to mate with the female again.



Well a species wouldnt have survived if they didnt somehow protect offspring. Humans dont have this problem as we are with to many and wont be dieing out soon because of abortion.




There is no crime against morality, morality is not set in stone.

And yet, females seem to counter this process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology)





Then there's this: http://www.bread.org/hunger/global/ Among natural diseases, among a whole host of other reasons for Human fatality. So, let me ask this: Why should we speed up the process?

Back in the 80's, your testimony was made about us being overpopulated. TheotherJacob already debunked you but allow me to do so.

http://overpopulationisamyth.com/ Science, it's a unique thing :).






Morality may not exist as a physical dimension, but it exists as something greater: The guidance of "our" consciousness. Because we can choose, we can choose to value life or to discard it.

As sad as it is to see many modern day citizens make the decision to discard life, I won't patronize their decision. However, I agree with Lelouch Vi Britannia.

"The only ones who can kill, are those who are prepared to be killed." For someone to throw away the sanctity of life, they should view their own lives just as worthless.

If a person disregards morality, but attempts to hold his own life as 'sacred' then that person to me is truly sickening. It's not "abnormal" in the sense that such sickening behavior has been part of our past.

No they dont, evolution is a random unconscious proces. It just happens that the ones who dont kill there offspring are more likely to spread their DNA. So the species who killed a lot of ofspring just died out and thats why they are not here anymore. This has nothing to do with it being bad behavior or some morality imposed by nature. An animal in itself doesn't care.
So don't talk about countering this in a way that makes ir sound like they do this on purpose.



Abortion is considerate and small, the population is rapidly growing. If we went to a place where we would abort so many babies that the population would decline then we would make the law more strict. But thats not a problem of today, today abortion actually solves problems and causes none.

ALSO TheOtherJacob debunked nothing and walked away. I'm talking about overpopulation when you use the american living standard. If we all live like average africans then there is indeed no overpopulation.



Morality is a product of fear, in fear of the brutal world people group together and install morals to protect themselves. The concept of right and wrong is only a manifestation of those morals. Once you realize that all these rules were build by humans a whole new door opens. It's simple you can either believe in a transcedental enitity and thus in set morals. Or you can believe that humans make their own life and can make it as they see fit.

.

You keep dodging the argument, the animals we eat are also life. Even the plants we eat are life. The only reason we value human life is because we are scared that if we dont our lifes are worthless. But the exption to this is extreme cases. Again I can bring up the hanging of a dictator, we are not scared to do this because this dictator was in an extreme situation we no longer find similar to our own. Same goes fot the unborn baby, it's in an extreme situation we dont find similar to our own (even if we all come from that state, We don't look at the past we look at the future).

Sadly some of us have to travel for a few days and disappear but I am pro choice as I've stated before and your argument on this is agreeable so far. Animals will kill their own species without remorse, morality is a human invention. You got the rest covered.

Why is it a Human invention? To protect ourselves from the strong? Not necessarily, it's more like to protect society from Anarchy, Chaos and brutal violence and discrimination! Secondly, if you clicked my link you'd note that birth rates are actually decreasing! In America, in the next few decades we'll see millions of baby boomers die out. That's just America!

We're in a transition period, and it's a transition period we're currently poorly prepared for because we're so shortsighted we think we currently deal with an "overpopulation" problem.

We've also developed morality, to hold a high sense of character and self worth. Human Psychology and its development is a continuing progress of evolution, it's ironic to say this but Liberalism which holds that morality is flimsy actually is the philosophy that takes us back, not conservatism.

You'd have us return to an era of lynchings, killings and beatings. Law cannot be sanctified if life itself is viewed as a disposable commodity.

first birthrate is not the only thing affecting population growth, second america is not the world. When living standards go up birthrates go down this is a proces that has always occured in history. Now don't worry as we can't afford everyone to have a high living standard this will never happen globally.

Medical advancement from the last 50 years have saved infinitly more lives then abortion lost. If you had come with this argument in medieval times when 1/3 of the European population was wiped out by the plague then yes maybe it had made sense. In today's world of 7 billion people and still rising with great speed, its just nonsense we will run out of recources long before we run out of people.



It's simple, if the population drops then the maximum living standard goes up. It makes no sense having 7 billion people around.



Funny that you say this because it's actually the otherway around. Human morality breaks with evolution and thus the rules of evolution can't be applied to humans. Weak humans are generaly not left to die so they still have offspring.
Also we are a very young species, any development would be almost unnoticable at this time in history.



No I would have us go to an era where humanity relies on itself to build society and not on some trancedental entity or law often called god.

It's easy to prove that morality is made up and holds no weight, the proof is very simple, and that proof is you. You are here telling us that abortion is wrong, that it is killing another living being, yet I distinctly remember you being an advocate for going to war against north korea, when that thread was in the SD. So how is it that you can promote organized murder such as war, yet stand to say that organized murder like abortion is wrong? Do you not see some form of hypocracy in that?

Animals in the wild have no morals. If another lion comes into a pride that isn't his, there's a fight. If the new comer wins, he kills all the cubs so that he can breed solely for himself. Nature does this all the time. All carnivors don't sit around after killing something and eating it, to contemplate it's life and if it's decision to kill was moral.

Humans most certainly do not based on societal study. As I've argued many times before, many in the middle east see no problem with stoning women to death, or raping little boys, it is common practice and socially accepted. To them, it is moral. Killing the jews during the second world war was moral for the germans, they didn't see anything wrong with it. Every time there has been a genocide, one side thinks they are morally superior over the other. That proves morality is not real.

Also since I haven't linked it in this thread yet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk6gOeggViw

Remember, you are talking to a Fascist which means he's got an excessive amount of nationalist fervor for America. In his mind, he can justify anything "in the defense of" America. If another country intereferes with American interests at home or abroad, that is justification enough to march our military into their country, dispose of their government,elected leadership and install a more "suitable" one in it's place.



Shouldn't it be more along the lines of morality is arbitrary rather than "not real". Each person has a set of morals which is enough to prove they exist but, since everyone's morals differ to varying degrees that makes them more arbitrary than anything.

True, I stand corrected in my use of language.

So there's only a difference in age? To me, there's no difference. You state that a zygote is a bunch of cells. But guess what? So are we.

http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blbodyelements.htm

We act as though as Adults that we have some genetic superiority to our offspring that gives us the right to cull and butcher them if we so choose. Well, I use the word "we" here loosely because I don't believe that premise(obviously, or I wouldn't oppose it)

There is no genetic superiority, the only "superiority" is that our parents happened not to be murderers and granted us our lives. The only superiority that the mother has, is that unlike her offspring she is conscious.

That is it, that is it...That is the only difference. It's funny that someone else posted about what if great men such as Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln were never born.

Well, 20-30 years after their respective revolutions, slavery and segregation were frowned on and rejected by society.

20-30 years from now, we'll recognize that abortion is just as abhorrent and barbaric as countless other Human Sins.
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Was slavery and segregation wrong? Is abortion wrong? Of course not! It's just the opinion of the majority. You only believe what you think because someone else told you so, which is a narrow-minded view of reality. In my opinion you just cast a false-reality and anything outside the reality is lies.

The people that were slaves only became slaves because they were to ignorant or weak to get out of the situation. If you are going through the motion of saying slavery is wrong, then you must be an animal activist right? Because what's the difference between slavery then and how we treat other species?

Cows, sheep, pigs and others in retrospect are "slaved" by a more superior animal.. can you deem that immoral? I don't deem it wrong, no no no. The wise tower over the weak and the foolish. That's the way the world works, and you can try sugar-coating it with your morals but deep down you know that's the truth.

We're on a porn website, why the hell do we even have to get philosophical? Didn't we all just come here to masturbate which in term contradicts what you just said?

Alright, I'll just break this up to make my arguments.

1. Zygotes are comprised of rapidly multiplying cells who are simply following the genetic code on what to eventually grow into. In other words, the cells have not grown to the point where they have a specific use yet. Whereas developed humans now lack (kinda, there is supposed evidence to the contrary) the "blank slate" cells which can (theoretically) grow to take on any new role.

2. The advantage that the mother holds is not that she simply is a conscious being. One must also take into account the experiences and decisions of both parents. Quite frankly, it is up to them to decide (key word) if they can manage bringing a child into the world. They actually have the choice and the right to decide whether or not they want a child to come into the world. In other words, consciousness is one thing, but a lifetime of experiences and the ability to make decisions (rational or not) is another thing entirely.

3. Dear god do I hate "what if" questions. Alright, let's think about it this way. "What if" MLK and Abraham Lincoln were never born? Given the number of humans on the planet (yeah, we sure as hell aren't few in number), it seems entirely logical that there would have been someone else to take their place. And by the by, it took FAR longer than 20-30 years for their "revolutions" to change anything. The civil rights movement was the end (or middle... up to people to decide whether or not it's still going on) of the changes started near the end of the civil war (and some time before it... history is a bit fickle). The end of the reconstruction period brought about the "gilded age", which essentially gave us a new form institutionalized slavery. But that is a subject for another time. Back to the "What if" hypocrisy. "What if" many of the horrid leaders in the world had been aborted (Names such as Stalin, Mao Zedong, "Papa Doc" DuValier, or *audible gasp* Hitler), wouldn't that mean that many innocent people would never had been murdered?! If you try to assert "What if" scenarios as any form of support of an argument, then you must accept their usage to show possible evidence to the contrary.

4. Quote: "In my opinion you just cast a false-reality and anything outside the reality is lies"
Aren't you doing the exact same by claiming that your point is correct, and thus abortion is wrong?

5. Oh boy, I was hoping for a slavery argument. The thoughts against slavery is that they (the blacks in the case of America, Africa, Spain, etc. The Irish for the British. The... everyone for the Saudis... I can go on forever with this) were (are) humans and therefore their enslavement is/was wrong. And, granted, people offered justification for slavery by (essentially) turning a blind eye to the humanizing aspects (as well as dehumanizing... the poor Irish...). However, those aspects of our society changed due to proactive movements by supporters and the victims of enslavement. While supporters can argue that abortion is wrong, it primarily falls on the parents to decide if abortion is a clear action, as a fetus cannot talk or act on it's own. So please, never again liken my/our ancestors to a fetus. Kinda disrespectful to them and what they stood for.

6. (BONUS ROUND) We discuss the finer points of human society, philosophy, psychology, etc. on a a pornographic site because, upon finishing, we no longer require stimulation after we have had a *ahem* release.

Side note: Whilst we are on the subject of possible "life" in terms of a fetus. Then what about the "life" of other cells used for procreation... I can honestly say that I am going straight to hell for the number of possible lives I have exterminated... I think I may have the high score...

The post you just responded to was actually a quote, sa he just reposted the post he wanted to talk about and then added his commentary after it. Look at the first page for the original post and it will all make sens to you.

I'm just going to respond to this and ignore LustfulAngel's silliness and constant stupidity that he's known for on this forum these days. Because you hit on some points that I'd personally liek to address.



This is interesting because we don't say the same thing about other things that are nt 'made up and hold no weight'. By thiI mean that people can be hypocritical on a variety of very real issues pertaining to math, logic, science, all of these things that are substantial in one way or another, yet we don't consider these things to hold no weight and to be completely arbitrary or subjective.

When a person comes up to a scientist and says, "Oh you believe in evolution? P'shaw. The world is only 6000 years old and God created everyone from Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden." And no matter what the scientist says, he can't convince this person that he's wrong...that doesn't render the science of evolutionary biology to be subjective, or that it holds no weight, or that it's just a bunch of made up crap. It just means that person is incapable of understanding, or unwanting to understand the subject.



There's a reason in which we actually hold ourselves as human beings to have morals whereas animals can 'sometimes' be said not ot have any. As human beings we have higher thinking capabilities beyond that of animals and are capable of weighing the consequences and intent resulting from or behind any one action. We're capable of understanding that there are better actions than others that will be more conducive to overall goals of flourishing or happiness, or whatever the societal goal may be. Animals lack this capability, so they seem like they have NO morals to us.

But in fact it can be said that some animals do express morals, just on a much more simplistic scale. A pride of lions share their food with each other. Packs of wolves follow their leader and do as the alpha says in order to continue their survival. Ongoing survival is a biological necessity for almost all animals that live, and as such actions we take are preferred to be conducive to that end.



No, it proves people disagree about what is moral. that's the maximum it CAN prove. Just because people disagree about a subject doesn't mean the subject is not real or not objective, that's simply a nonsequitor. Philosophers have been debating how one can subsantially view morality ever since the pre-socratic era at the very least. To say, "People disagree, therefore moral realism is false" is to ignore a vast array of professional thinkers on this very topic. Many of which have taken this into account and dismissed it as not a valid argument, much as I have just done.



NOW! My opinion on whether or not abortion is equivalent to killing a human being.

No. It's not. It cannot possibly be considered the same. If one wants to make that statement one has to provide sufficient reason to draw the comparison, and thus far I've never seen anything sufficient. The beginning post says that life begins at conception. Well that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense because conception is a 24 hour process. So when in that 24 hour process does that life begin? How can you say that? What if you say it begins after the 24 hour process is completed? Well now you have the problem of twinning, which can occur up to 4 weeks after conception. Did a new life just begin? How did another life spring from one life without any sexual intercourse? IF I 'kill' a fetus that would have twinned later on in its gestation period have I committed double murder? How would you know that?

What about when twins eat each other in the womb? Has one murdered the other? They're not even cognitively aware they've done it, would you condemn them right out of the womb? And if not how can we be condemned for doing something very similar to them? Because we're cognitively aware of what we're doing? But the fetus clearly isn't. How much different is it really from ending the gestation process of a fetus and washing your hands and killing a bunch of germs or skin cells?

And besides that, what about the woman's rights in all of this? Does she have no rights to her own body anymore because she is pregnant? Something else gets to just use her body against her will because society said so? How is that in any way 'moral'?

What if society made any of you anti-abortion people lay on a slab and be forced to give up a kidney to someone you didn't know? Don't you think you should have the right to say, "Ummm, no I'm not going to do that." What if you were hooked up against your will to someone and told you had to stay that way for 9 months against your will? Would you not have the right to say, "No!" and disconnect yourself?

Anyhow, that's my take on the issue.

This can not be compared to sience, sience is totally different in nature from Morality. The world around us is something we try to understand so we can use it for our benefit but ultimatly we can not change its nature. Now morals are a product of our intellect and as such we are very able to shape them. This leads to the statement that there are no real morals. Only the ones we make ourselves but those can be changed by us.

As I see it you can split restrictions in 2 parts:

Physical restrictions: These we cannot overcome we can only try to inspect them and push them to their limit. An example of this would be that we need oxygen to survive.

Intellectual restrictions: These are restrictions we put on ourselves and often we forget that, but these arent set and can be changed by us. Examples are religion and morality. People have a tendency to restrict their freedom by imposing these restrictions. They will often asociate them with A trancedental entity to make themselves believe they arent in control of these restrictions.


The only thing we can do is as you say set out goals and take logical steps to achieve them. In this light morals can be made to restrict peoples behaviour to something thats desirable in reaching this goals.



Animals work different, there is no consious working towards a goals. There is only behavior and those with behaviour that was vital for survival are the ones who survives. This is pure chance nothing else is involved in this.



If morals are real then there should be something that enforces them, something trancedental that is beyond our concieving but still like a barrier stops us from doing immoral things. Like gravity stops us from flying.



A fetus doesnt murder his twin, the other fetus was weak and died and the components are then "absorbed" by the other fetus. But the fact that one died has nothing to do with an act of the other.



Well I think parents have certain obligations to their child, but I also think its the parents obligation to abort the child if they can't give it a future

I don't want to take it off topic, but I will defend my positions. North Korea's rhetoric was incredibly dangerous at the time, with graphic propaganda threatening the use of nuclear weapons against our citizens. In addition, it had also positioned its arsenal and threatened against our ally Japan.

When a regime threatens the lives of hundreds of millions, and thinks it can do so with impunity, it is no longer a legitimate regime on the world stage. Nosferatu agrees when he says that the disposing of a dictator is a radical action taken in preservation of the natives of the country in question and the world at large. It's also seen as a dictator is different in a sense from the masses of Humanity.

I had said in that thread, that I would be more than willing to see a North Korean response if it feels our soldiers at the South are threatening their sovernignty(though it's not). The same if the terrorists were to limit their operations to defending their home country.

But the moment they start attacking government officials, or citizens of a country their grievances are not legitimate, but pure and malicious criminal acts of intended murder.

Also, I'll leave it up to your intepretation as to whether or not North Korea holds actual, legitimate elections