Roe v Wade is on deck

[Emily Lake]

The union of a human egg with a human sperm starts the beginning of an entity that is surely human. We call human entitys persons.

Alright... I'm going to push back on this.

I understand your belief, and I respect it. But I also disagree with it.

At conception, that zygote has none of the components that we think of as a person, aside from genetic code. I don't think it's reasonable to think that two cells with some DNA in it is a human being - it has the potential to become a human, certainly, but it isn't really one yet.

As it develops, it gets closer to human, but it spends a while pretty much being a tadpole. At the earliest stage of development, all vertebrates look the same, and have the same developed parts - spinal cord, and the start of some organs. As it continues to develop, fish and birds and mammals start to diverge - preliminary limbs form that show differences by class.

At about 10 to 12 weeks of development, the fetus will look pretty distinctly human in form - head, eyes, hands and toes, fingernails, etc. At this point, it will look like a very large-headed baby. I could see an argument that the fetus is a human at this point, but prior to that it's a hard argument to make.

At this stage, however, there's no possibility of that fetus surviving outside the womb. The necessary organs, lungs, etc just haven't developed yet. While I would prefer and hope that most women would continue the pregnancy at this stage, I can't object on the grounds that I hold as values. I understand that you do.

For me, I can't see a defensible distinction between a baby that can survive and thrive outside of the womb as a premie, and one of the same developmental stage that is still inside the womb. But by that same token, I can't see a defensible distinction between a baby that is categorically incapable of surviving as a premie based on whether they're inside or outside the womb. In both cases, they're not capable of being independent.

 

[Emily Lake]

There is no other time in a human's lifecycle where it is considered permissible to decide if they live or die because of the decision of 2 other people.

This isn't entirely true.

I just went through this with my dad. His system was failing due to pancreatic cancer, and he was unconscious and not mentally capable of speaking on his behalf. The decision of whether to continue interventions that had no hope of saving his life, or whether to provide amelioration of pain and allow him to die... that was left to my mom and the doctor.

It's not entirely the same, of course. But there are definitely similarities. At the end of the day... it was up to 2 people to decide whether to continue his life and his suffering, or to let him die with as much comfort and love as we could provide.

 

[Emily Lake]

There’s the major difference: I don’t consider having an abortion to be murder.

You've said this many times. And this is where I push back on your principles, and whether you actually believe what you say you believe. I'm not saying you're being untruthful in any way - I'm suggesting that you haven't thoroughly considered the ramifications and consequences of your stated position.

If you do not consider having abortion to be murder... then it would logically follow that you do not consider an abortion performed two days before expected delivery, where the mother is in perfect health with no known risks, and the baby has developed normally with no identifiable defects or disorders, to be killing a baby at all. In the most crass possible terms, it would logically follow that a woman could decide "Nah, I've changed my mind and don't want a kid" two days before delivery, and could go in and say "Doc, get this thing out of me"... and you would be just fine and accepting of that, and would have no negative judgement of that hypothetical woman.

Is that actually your position? I'm looking for confirmation on this.

I’ve just learned not to judge.

Maybe not about this specific topic... but you certainly judge people an a variety of other things.

 

[Emily Lake]

I think that you should use your own moral framework when deciding whether or not you should have an abortion.

Do you think that other people should use their own moral framework when deciding whether to kill a 6-month old baby? Or when deciding whether to kill an elderly dependent parent with dementia? Or their neighbor?

 

[Emily Lake]

A fetus is not autonomous. It cannot survive outside the mother’s body. It depends upon her heart, her lungs, her brain, her circulatory system, kidneys, digestive system, immune system: all of the woman’s body’s functions make the fetus’ continued existence possible.

At 28 weeks development it can - and it frequently does!

So why do you think that a 28 week developing human can be killed on a whim as long as it's in the right location, but if it's in a different location that would be murder?

Probably for the same reason that you think that a developing human can be killed depending on where they are on the calendar.

A seed is not a sprout, and a sprout is not a tree. A sprout in your yard and a sprout in a pot are both still sprouts.

Age makes a very big difference in a huge amount of our lives, and we don't treat people of different ages the same way in many situations. A five year old is not a 25 year old - we don't allow a five year old to go to the strip club and start pounding whiskey. The amount of autonomy and self-sufficiency we expect from a 6 month old is worlds apart from what we expect of a 6 year old, and even further apart from what we would think appropriate for a 60 year old. Throughout our entire lives, we consider the physical and cognitive capabilities at different stages of life to be material and important.

It's fallacious to pretend that we are unable to consider developmentally-dependent capabilities prior to birth to be indistinguishable at all stages. I don't know what that kind of fallacy is called... but fallacious it remains.

 

[laughing dog]

I think that you should use your own moral framework when deciding whether or not you should have an abortion.

Do you think that other people should use their own moral framework when deciding whether to kill a 6-month old baby? Or when deciding whether to kill an elderly dependent parent with dementia? Or their neighbor?

Yes, I do. Just don’t necessarily expect our justice system to agree because your example are murder. Abortion is not.

 

[Emily Lake]

A fetus is not autonomous. It cannot survive outside the mother’s body. It depends upon her heart, her lungs, her brain, her circulatory system, kidneys, digestive system, immune system: all of the woman’s body’s functions make the fetus’ continued existence possible.

At 28 weeks development it can - and it frequently does!

Requiring a huge amount of medical intervention that can run into the millions of dollars. Just saying.

With a plethora of long term and sometimes permanent disabilities or conditions.

Sure. Of course, a child born at full gestation who develops a severe disability at 1 year old may require a huge amount of medical intervention that can run into the millions of dollars too, and leave them permanently disabled or ill.

Do you believe that the parents should have the right to decide whether that child gets to continue living or whether to dispose of it on the spot as well?

 

[laughing dog]

A fetus is not autonomous. It cannot survive outside the mother’s body. It depends upon her heart, her lungs, her brain, her circulatory system, kidneys, digestive system, immune system: all of the woman’s body’s functions make the fetus’ continued existence possible.

At 28 weeks development it can - and it frequently does!

So why do you think that a 28 week developing human can be killed on a whim as long as it's in the right location, but if it's in a different location that would be murder?

Probably for the same reason that you think that a developing human can be killed depending on where they are on the calendar.

A seed is not a sprout, and a sprout is not a tree. A sprout in your yard and a sprout in a pot are both still sprouts.

A fetus is not a baby and a baby is not a fetus. Born is not unborn. Unborn is not born.

Age makes a very big difference in a huge amount of our lives, and we don't treat people of different ages the same way in many situations. A five year old is not a 25 year old - we don't allow a five year old to go to the strip club and start pounding whiskey. The amount of autonomy and self-sufficiency we expect from a 6 month old is worlds apart from what we expect of a 6 year old, and even further apart from what we would think appropriate for a 60 year old. Throughout our entire lives, we consider the physical and cognitive capabilities at different stages of life to be material and important.

It's fallacious to pretend that we are unable to consider developmentally-dependent capabilities prior to birth to be indistinguishable at all stages. I don't know what that kind of fallacy is called... but fallacious it remains.

None of that rebuts what I wrote. You base your position on the calendar. Others do not.

 

[Emily Lake]

I think that you should use your own moral framework when deciding whether or not you should have an abortion.

Do you think that other people should use their own moral framework when deciding whether to kill a 6-month old baby? Or when deciding whether to kill an elderly dependent parent with dementia? Or their neighbor?

Yes, I do. Just don’t necessarily expect our justice system to agree because your example are murder. Abortion is not.

I'm surprised at the bolded. That way lies actual madness, a society with no shared values, no shared conventions, and actual anarchy and chaos.

Taking your post as a whole... Do you think the justice system is within its power to disagree with you and impose shared laws that limit the moral frameworks of serial killers?

Is there any point in a pregnancy where you - in your moral framework - would consider it murder to abort a health baby in a healthy mother? Two weeks before expected delivery? Two days? An hour into labor? What is your personal line for when it's murder and when it is not, when it comes to the gestational, birthing, and raising process of small humans?

 

[Toni]

There’s the major difference: I don’t consider having an abortion to be murder.

You've said this many times. And this is where I push back on your principles, and whether you actually believe what you say you believe. I'm not saying you're being untruthful in any way - I'm suggesting that you haven't thoroughly considered the ramifications and consequences of your stated position.

If you do not consider having abortion to be murder... then it would logically follow that you do not consider an abortion performed two days before expected delivery, where the mother is in perfect health with no known risks, and the baby has developed normally with no identifiable defects or disorders, to be killing a baby at all. In the most crass possible terms, it would logically follow that a woman could decide "Nah, I've changed my mind and don't want a kid" two days before delivery, and could go in and say "Doc, get this thing out of me"... and you would be just fine and accepting of that, and would have no negative judgement of that hypothetical woman.

Is that actually your position? I'm looking for confirmation on this.

I’ve just learned not to judge.

Maybe not about this specific topic... but you certainly judge people an a variety of other things.

I do not consider ‘an abortion performed two days before the due date’ to be anything other than a sick fantasy.

 

[Toni]

I think that you should use your own moral framework when deciding whether or not you should have an abortion.

Do you think that other people should use their own moral framework when deciding whether to kill a 6-month old baby? Or when deciding whether to kill an elderly dependent parent with dementia? Or their neighbor?

I do not equate a fetus at 6 months gestation to be equivalent to a 6 month old infant.

There are many many differences.

 

[Toni]

A fetus is not autonomous. It cannot survive outside the mother’s body. It depends upon her heart, her lungs, her brain, her circulatory system, kidneys, digestive system, immune system: all of the woman’s body’s functions make the fetus’ continued existence possible.

At 28 weeks development it can - and it frequently does!

Requiring a huge amount of medical intervention that can run into the millions of dollars. Just saying.

With a plethora of long term and sometimes permanent disabilities or conditions.

Sure. Of course, a child born at full gestation who develops a severe disability at 1 year old may require a huge amount of medical intervention that can run into the millions of dollars too, and leave them permanently disabled or ill.

Do you believe that the parents should have the right to decide whether that child gets to continue living or whether to dispose of it on the spot as well?

I have no idea why you made this leap of ‘logic’ but I think you need some serious help.

 

[laughing dog]

I think that you should use your own moral framework when deciding whether or not you should have an abortion.

Do you think that other people should use their own moral framework when deciding whether to kill a 6-month old baby? Or when deciding whether to kill an elderly dependent parent with dementia? Or their neighbor?

Yes, I do. Just don’t necessarily expect our justice system to agree because your example are murder. Abortion is not.

I'm surprised at the bolded. That way lies actual madness, a society with no shared values, no shared conventions, and actual anarchy and chaos.

FFS, a justice system requires a shared convention and values. So I have no idea what sparked that spasm of hysteria.

Taking your post as a whole... Do you think the justice system is within its power to disagree with you and impose shared laws that limit the moral frameworks of serial killers?

A person’s moral framework is not the same as laws. Laws are rules with consequences for breaking them. I can have moral values inconsistent with our laws but stay within the law.
So your question makes no sense to me.

Is there any point in a pregnancy where you - in your moral framework - would consider it murder to abort a health baby in a healthy mother? Two weeks before expected delivery? Two days? An hour into labor? What is your personal line for when it's murder and when it is not, when it comes to the gestational, birthing, and raising process of small humans?

My view is fetuses are not babies. So abortion is not murder anytime during the pregnancy. In the womb is not murder, out of the womb usually murder.

 

[Elixir]

I think that you should use your own moral framework when deciding whether or not you should have an abortion.

Do you think that other people should use their own moral framework when deciding whether to kill a 6-month old baby? Or when deciding whether to kill an elderly dependent parent with dementia? Or their neighbor?

Yes, I do. Just don’t necessarily expect our justice system to agree because your example are murder. Abortion is not.

I'm surprised at the bolded. That way lies actual madness, a society with no shared values, no shared conventions, and actual anarchy and chaos.

FFS, a justice system requires a shared convention and values. So I have no idea what sparked that spasm of hysteria.

Taking your post as a whole... Do you think the justice system is within its power to disagree with you and impose shared laws that limit the moral frameworks of serial killers?

A person’s moral framework is not the same as laws. Laws are rules with consequences for breaking them. I can have moral values inconsistent with our laws but stay within the law.
So your question makes no sense to me.

Is there any point in a pregnancy where you - in your moral framework - would consider it murder to abort a health baby in a healthy mother? Two weeks before expected delivery? Two days? An hour into labor? What is your personal line for when it's murder and when it is not, when it comes to the gestational, birthing, and raising process of small humans?

My view is fetuses are not babies. So abortion is not murder anytime during the pregnancy. In the womb is not murder, out of the womb usually murder.

I think a pregnant woman should be the judge. If she aborts the fetus, she will suffer loss, even if she never intended to carry it to term. Probably even moreso if she later changed her mind about carrying it to term. And even more if it miscarried or spontaneously aborted. But always a strong sense of loss.
If she doesn’t suffer loss, she shouldn’t be anyone’s Mom anyhow.

 

[Toni]

I don’t agree. A girl or a woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape would most likely feel relief at no longer being pregnant.

I would have.

 

[Bomb#20]

I am thinking of all those babies who were killed. They had no say in their fate.
You would not accept that fate for any other person so why the unborn?

Viability is currently at about 24 weeks. If that falls to 23, the fetuses that will consequently survive are the 23-week ones, so that’s who you’re calling “persons”. Why do you think a 23-week fetus is a person?

The union of a human egg with a human sperm starts the beginning of an entity that is surely human. We call human entitys persons.

Why do you believe that? A human egg is an entity that is surely human, and it already existed for many years before it absorbed a sperm. Proportionally, fertilization adds about as much material to an egg as a measles vaccine adds to a child. So how does that smidgin change the preexisting human entity into a person any more than adding some random internet crackpot’s idiosyncratic moral formula to a ten-year-old boy change him into a person?

 

[Bomb#20]

Why are women not worthy of bodily autonomy?

Oh come on. Women are worthy of bodily autonomy... but bodily autonomy doesn't grant women the privilege to murder people.

Even if it did, bodily autonomy doesn’t do the work fans of that argument think it does. Bodily autonomy means you can slit your wrists if you choose; what it doesn’t mean is you can get someone else to do it for you. If you slit someone’s wrists, showing the jury a signed request and a videotape of the victim asking you to do it isn’t going to save you from a murder conviction.

Perhaps closer to the topic at hand, bodily autonomy means you have the right to cut out your kidney. And you even have the right to get a competent surgeon to do it for you, to save your dying brother. But the rest of us get to police the reason she has for cutting out your kidney. She has no bodily autonomy right to cut out your kidney so you can sell it.

 

[Jarhyn]

what it doesn’t mean is you can get someone else to do it for you

Why not, if they also apply their own bodily autonomy in concert with your own? It doesn't stop being autonomy just because two people are being co-autonomous and cooperative in the execution of a task.

Please either prove this conjecture or treat it as conjecture.

 

[Elixir]

A fetus is not a baby and a baby is not a fetus. Born is not unborn. Unborn is not born.

Just like a lib’rul, trying to confuse ‘em with facts!

 

[Toni]

My view is fetuses are not babies. So abortion is not murder anytime during the pregnancy. In the womb is not murder, out of the womb usually murder.

If someone deliberately dies something to cause a pregnant woman to lose the pregnancy against her will: Say, slashes open her abdomen when she is 7 months pregnant and causes sufficient injury to the fetus that it dies, I would have a difficult time not calling that murder of the fetus. Obviously assault with intent to kill the woman.

Yes, that is inconsistent with my views of late term abortion.

Unfortunately, it is not a crazy, outrageous thing to suggest might happen. Pregnant women are at an increased risk of physical assault, injury and murder at the hands of an intimate partner. In fact, that is one of the greatest risks to a pregnant woman’s health and safety.