What do you think about abortion

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I am prolife: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack ... o-life.php

As much as it pains me to confess this, I have to admit that I'm somewhat pro-life. The problem I have is that both solutions, adoption and abortion, are deeply mired in a little thing called morality. It's like choosing between being smothered in your sleep with a pillow and going to see the Nazi dentist from Marathon Man. Either way, both paths are going to suck, with the only difference being that one option is slightly more dignified and slightly less painful.Darkness Induced Audience Apathy, indeed.

Yes, it does. Legally.

As mentioned previously, a woman can choose to give up the child for adoption or abort even without the father's consent. There is NO law that forces a woman to keep the child. On the other hand, there are plenty of laws forcing the man to provide for said child. I believe it is only if the couple is married that the man will have some legal rights to the child.

Child support is very rarely forced upon women if the man wins sole custody of the child. But if its a woman that gains full custody? 18 years the law will force him to pay.



The do fail. Likewise, the woman could also be held responsible for not being on contraceptive pill ... or not having her tubes tied or avoided opening her legs. See how silly this argument is?



The argument of 'its her body' is null the moment another human being needs it to remain alive. Case in point: If you are walking down the street and see a man get run over by a car...and you are the only person present and don't help or call 911 or do ANYTHING but walk by... you are, can and will be charged for that man's death. Not as the culprit but because of negligence. Its the same situation here except its not a random accident..the woman had sex (i'm excluding rape cases here) and thus is 50% responsible for the situation.



So..why then is the man forced into being 'committed party' by the law when he makes it clear the moment the woman finds out she's pregnant and she decides to have the child...but he does not? The absurdity of it is that the law says that any contract made under threat and coercion is null.. the courts are forcing said contract in that case.

On the other hand, the mother CAN choose to become an 'interested party' after giving birth...by giving the child away without the consent of the father (if they're not married).



I think that's not the issue. The issue is what happens when he doesn't want the child and she does.. bearing a child because its her CHOICE does not compare to child support for 18 years which was not his choice. The use of the word 'responsibility' there is silly... that's not a responsibility, its a consequence.



Here's the catch: there are ways to extract a fertilized embryo and transplant it into another womb. This needs to be done very early in the pregnancy before the umbilical cord forms. Since we are basing this on it being the woman's body would it not also be fair to say that she has the responsibility of checking for pregnancy every month if she is sexually active? I mean this in the sense that IF the man would want the child and she does not, the only person who can 'find out' if a pregnancy happens early on to enable the relocation is the woman. Its her body yes... if she does not want the child she should be responsible for giving early warning and having it ...gone.



... and again... you can also say women should not be allowing themselves to get pregnant. Silly argument ad naseum.. it takes two to tango.

But this links to my previous point. I agree with you on this since it is fair for 50% of the problem at hand: this is where SHE wants the child and HE does not. The issue is when HE wants the child and SHE does not. In that situation , IF there was a law that said 'the woman, being responsible for her body, has the responsibility of checking herself for pregnancy (unwanted) and notify the father prior to X time so the embryo can be relocated should she not wish to bear the child...and the woman would waive/renounce her legal rights to the child' ... would that be fair?

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. Every time I dump this concept on rabid 'its my body' argument women they always resort to emotional responses like 'but if she does not want it how can she live knowing there is a child with her genes out there?' bla bla bla... and never manage to give me more than a 'stfu' response when I point out that men are also emotionally devastated when they find out a child who carried their genes was snuffed out of existence and he had no say in it.

It probably depends on the state, but there was just a case in the Supreme Court where a father was challenging the adoption of a kid that the mother had adopted out without telling him. IIrc, The court ruled that he didn't get custody not because he was the father, but because he hadn't been caring for the child and that continuous custody was in the child's best interest.


That's not correct, at least in California. One of my male co-workers not only got child support, but got palimony from his ex after they split b/c she made more than him. The point is to give the kid as high a standard of living as possible, regardless of whom the caretaker is.


Yes. Vex was satirizing Zero's and Angel's arguments.


No human has a right to use another human's body for 9 months. Calling 911 is one thing; allowing another person to, say, suck your blood for 9 months because they need it to stay alive, is quite another.


You are not even close to correct. Once the zygote implants in the uterus, there is no way to extract it without killing it until it's ready to live on its own. Before the zygote implants in the uterus, there's no way to even tell if it exists. Look it up (on an actual developmental biology/physiology site, preferably) if you don't believe me.

With external fertilization, as with fertility clinics, the zygote can be manipulated for a short space of time before being implanted in a host because the location and status is completely controlled by the doctor doing the IVF. Again, though, once it's implanted it's either staying there for a while, or it's dying.

If such a technology actually existed - if, for example, the embryo could be switched to the father, or to some surrogate paid by the father, with no more danger to the original woman than an abortion would cause, then that might be an interesting legal question. Unfortunately, that technology does not exist.

I think we're mostly in agreement here, but let's be careful to avoid weaker arguments.

No one is OBLIGATED to get involved when it comes to accidents that they aren't initially involved in. You take more of a risk getting involved than not. I pass accidents and flat tires all the time, and knowing that MOST people have cell phones I don't feel quite so bad in passing them by. If I SEE someone in a car accident right before my eyes, I'll call law enforcement myself and check out everyone involved...not because I feel an obligation to help them, but because I feel deeply that it's just the right thing to do. I love my fellow human beings, and that's where it comes from. If everyone is ok, we might wait around long enough to talk to police or even leave contact info in the event we're needed as court witnesses, but otherwise we'll stay around IF NEEDED until emergency personnel arrive. If no one is hurt, we'll just move on because we'll only be in the way if we stick around.

Not long ago I was driving behind a guy hauling lumber when he took a turn too sharp and lost the lumber he was carrying. I pulled over and stopped the van long enough to help him reload his truck. Why did I do it? First, it was just the decent thing to do in that situation. Second, I wan't going anywhere because as long as he was putting lumber back in his truck, I couldn't go anywhere. Third, it created a dangerous situation for other motorists, so helping him out was also really helping others out who might be passing by at the time. I could just as easily stayed on the road right behind him and waited...it just wouldn't have done any good, whereas given the choice I made he was back on the road again in less than 5 minutes.

That's just being a "good Samaritan." And just like the proverbial priest and Levite, the Samaritan was never obligated to help; he saw a need and possessed the willingness to help.

The problem with being a "good Samaritan" in a litigious society is that the good Samaritan does become legally obligated once he becomes involved, same as if I witness an auto accident and rush to help. If I drop my name, I could potentially be subpoenaed to testify in court. Even worse, if I pull someone from a burning wreckage, I could get sued if they get cut by broken glass, or if they break their spine in a wreck, I could get sued if they become permanently paralyzed. There have been laws passed to prevent garbage like that from happening, but "good Samaritan" laws can't stop truly awful people from trying. No good deed goes unpunished.

(If I recall correctly, the good Samaritan dropped the guy off and paid for someone to care for the poor guy and remained safely anonymous afterward. It seems to me the best practice is to drop in and drop out the same way people have described what they believe to be angels, helping out when it is needed, disappearing quickly, and leaving no traceable or identifying evidence of who they might actually be. Some people prefer to help out because they want recognition for what they do or they want to somehow obligate the person they help to their own agenda. Always beware the free lunch.)

The point is this: I'd be careful with making the defense that we are somehow obligated to be good Samaritans. Indeed, we are not obligated to be decent human beings, and sometimes being a decent human being can come back around and bite us in the @$$.


Personally, I think human life begins at conception, end of story. However, we do have the problem that the female body might reject the embryo. So in my opinion, you can't really fault a woman or anyone else if the loss happens before the embryo becomes implanted in the womb and becomes self-sustaining. I would find it difficult to argue against requiring a woman or anyone else to keep an embryo BEFORE it is implanted. It still feels intuitively wrong to me, though, to destroy an embryo before we can establish whether it can survive by itself in the womb. For that reason, I think legal personhood should be defined as when the embryo has implanted in the womb. Being able to catch the embryo and transplant it would be a moot point.

Gods not real and if women dont want to have kids then maybe they know whats right and allow them to have a choice not to have kids its that simple!

Those are different situations. I'm talking about when someone is visibly in need of life saving assistance and you choose to not provide it and walk off. Aka a robbery takes place in a store only you and the clerk are in, the clerk gets shot and the criminal runs off. If the surveillance cameras show that you saw the clerk bleeding in the ground and you just walk out and don't do anything...if the clerk dies you will be held responsible for his death via negligence.

LKL:


The point is, they would not have the right to use it if they were not responsible for the situation in the first place. If say, you have an extremely rare blood type and there is a person in the hospital that will eventually die if you don't donate your blood... you can refuse doing so and there is no legal consequence to it. Unlike the clerk, that person is not dying immediately and there is still the option of finding another donor. The baby has no other means of surviving and the mother IS 50% responsible for the baby's situation (excluding rape). In my view, it ceased to be her body exclusively the moment a child within her needs it to survive... just like a man's wages cease to be exclusively his the moment the court decides to ignore the fact he did not want to child and the woman did. While there is a difference between the labors inside a body for 9 months and the labors of the man's body to earn said wage the point is the same: When the kid is in the picture you are responsible whether you like it or not.

I will correct you here as this is not an episode of Seinfeld.

If you see a man run over by a car and are the only person present and do NOTHING but walk by, there is no such crime as "criminal indifference." As a general rule of law, there is no duty to assist or rescue someone in peril...even if it's just calling 911. I know of no place in the USA with a law to the contrary.

You believe something smaller than the mites currently inhabiting your eyelashes is the same as a fully grown living person with thoughts and dreams. That's an absurd and extreme viewpoint.

If you voluntarily put a kid into a car and then get into an accident, and the kid's spleen is busted and it needs blood, and you have the only blood that matches in a 5-county radius, you still can't be compelled by law to donate that blood, even though you're responsible for putting the kid in the car and the kid will die without it.

It's not absurd. It's completely irrelevant.

Look at it another way: If your definition of "human" means "fully grown living person with thoughts and dreams" holds, then there are certain "fully grown living" persons with no thoughts and dreams who by your definition aren't human. They are...what? Aliens? Mutants? Zombies? Anything but human according to your reasoning. So, exactly how should we dispose of them since they aren't human? They're an inhuman burden on society. So let's just go ahead and put them out of our misery, right?

What's absurd is not that human life starts at conception. It's not even absurd that life exists prior to conception. It's a question of who the life belongs to. Sex cells are living cells. They just belong to the humans that produce them, just like any other cell. A zygote/embryo, depending on perspective, either belongs to BOTH parents or it belongs to itself. If it is the property of its parents, then they can decide at any time what to do with it. And that means at ANY time. They could perform vivisection on it when it becomes a toddler. It's THEIRS, just like any other piece of property.

The problem with parents performing vivisection on their kids is the rest of society somehow doesn't see it that way. Not that society is right about everything--slavery and a whole bunch of other things used to be acceptable by societies at some point in human history--and society is notoriously fickle. But it remains that if word gets out that you performed vivisection on a toddler, society won't exactly take it under consideration that the toddler was your property.

No, the toddler is its own person and can find protection against its own parents if a situation is sufficiently dire enough to warrant separating it from its parents. That individuality has its origin in a human being's conception.

What's truly absurd is saying that a single human cell isn't human. Once two cells become a unique individual, it is what it came from--i.e. if it came from cats, it's a cat. If it came from a asdgfhkhlas, then it's a asdgfhkhlas. And if it came from humans, it's a human.

And if we are bent on protecting human life, then I fail to see why the developmental stage is relevant.

^ AngelRho, not considering something *quite* human is not the same as utterly disrespecting it as if worth nothing. I mean, if someone threw someone else's body in a dumpster, pragmatically and objectively, there is nothing wrong with that because it's a corpse. But even corpses no longer alive deserve some respect.

I have a question for you. What do you think about donating someonr's organs when they are brain-dead?

Again, you miss a key point.

IF you were criminally negligent for the accident (say you CHOSE to drive under the influence), then you could be criminally charged for the death of your child. Of course, the whole scenario is a little off because just the child being harmed by the accident would make you subject to the charges of child abuse/endangerment.

IF you just had an accident, no other party involved and no criminal negligence on your part, no criminal charges would be applied because sometimes an accident happens. You did not choose the proximate cause of the accident.

They are already dead.

That's a tough call. In my view, I think a living body is still living, so it might be better to play it safe for that person and keep them alive in the event that the brain manages to resume functioning. Even if it's a long shot, as long as there's a possibility however remote, all people deserve a chance.

I respect that not everyone feels that way, however, and that often it is just better for all involved to just let go--including the person in question. As long as you can resolve the issue of a brain-dead person's wishes (while they still have a properly functioning brain), then pulling the plug on someone may not really be a problem. And I'm not talking legally, because we do have power of attorney and living wills. I mean morally. Is it morally correct for me to expect my loved ones to keep me plugged in for the sake of a chance I might wake up? That's why it's a tough question...I don't know, and there really isn't a way to know. I guess I have a tough time dealing with the idea of giving up on anyone, including myself. I've never been brain dead or dead otherwise, at least not that I was aware of (?), and I'm afraid that the one way I could find out isn't an option I'm very comfortable with (!).

So inasmuch as the person who is plugged in has a problem being unplugged for any reason, that's how much of a problem I have with it. If that is your decision, I can't really say anything about it, you know, in terms of whether I think it's right or wrong.

Now we're talking about harvesting organs...same concept. Harvesting organs from a person with no brain function will end their physical life. So if that is something they've worked out in a living will in some form or another, I can't really say if I think that's a BAD thing or not. But if that's their will, I'm not exactly sure what problem I CAN have with it.