What do you think about abortion

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Often they do the same procedure as abortion, after a woman has miscarried, especially if they think she will be at risk of haemorrhaging. It's still a standard D&C, however still classified as medical miscarriage rather than abortion. Also - if they know the woman will almost certainly miscarry anyway due to medical reasons, and it is probably to cause haemorrhaging, in that case, they will do the same procedure regardless, especially if they can obviously see all the signs point that way, it will be heavily recommended. In the first case, the baby will already be dead, in the second, it will be nearing it or with an 80% chance or more of it (in such a case they are likely to be extremely premature anyway and will still probably die even in the extreme situation that they managed to survive).

Essentially it's all the same procedure mecially speaking - still D&C, simply under different names depending on the state of both mother and baby and the circumstances.

I think men would opt for the foetus transplant, out of high-minded pro-life principles, and then quite a number of them, once pregnant, would think 'screw this, get it out of me!' Men haven't been conditioned to think having a zef inside them is their raison d'etre, so I think that a lot of them would change their mind once they had the actual experience of their bodies not belonging to them any more.

I really wish male anatomy would let you give birth, then women who have C-sections wouldn't get the same guilt-tripping and subtle accusations of going 'against nature' that they currently get.

Also, not wanting to be pregnant is not about inconvenience, it's about bodily autonomy.

I'll always go for plan B if I suspect my birth control won't be effective (due to sickness or missing a pill.) I'd also get an early chemical abortion if my period didn't come after a gap in the pills - so an abortion later than 7 months isn't likely to be needed. However I'm 'lucky' enough that I can take hormonal birth control (with all the 'yay' side effects and gender dysphoria that brings - I'm genderqueer and resent taking extra female hormones, but I also resent even having a body capable of pregnancy, somebody please just sterilise me.) Lots of women can't take hormonal birth control because of various medical reasons and condoms fail quite often (all the abortions I've known to be performed on acquaintances have been due to broken condoms) those women are going to find out their pregnant probably after you 7-week mark.

I've never been pregnant that far (I probably have never been pregnant but there's no way I can know for certain) but just the thought of being forced to carry a foetus I don't want makes me a bit depressed. If abortion is illegal, women will do self-destructive things as well as illegal foetus-destructive things.

I think they should alleviate some of this problem by letting more people get sterilised (not just people who've had x amount of children) and also working on an effective completely reversible male contraceptive with no sexual side-effects. I think doing the latter will finally start the second sexual revolution I've been agitating for.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 23 Jun 2013, 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[quote="AngelRho"][/quote]
I think the flaw in your argument is that a foetus is not a "human being" in any meaningful sense of the word. It is just a collection of cells inside a woman.

Sadder still - if they knew they were making blood sacrifices to pagan deities they could at least make a wish on the sacrifice. Can't even get that right when they don't know.

I think the flaw in your argument is that a toddler is not a "human being" in any meaningful sense of the word. It is just a collection of cells outside a woman.

Two points:

1) It is very hard to tell at what point a Homo sapiens becomes a person, but we know it is after birth. This makes birth a safe cut off point in law.
2) I think the case for killing a very young human (younger than 18 months) is stronger than the case for killing an adult pig. I am against both, but most people are in favour of killing the pig and against killing the young human. I believe infanticide should be illegal because many conscious humans have very strong attachments to infants, but the mother should have the decision about whether she wishes to keep carrying a foetus. Given how traumatising an abortion is, I think any woman who is willing to go through with it must have a very good reason and should be allowed to.

I don't think an infant has an intrinsic right to life beyond that of a pig or dog, only an instrumental one. Certainly I wouldn't have minded being killed before being 18 months old, but my parents (and family and family friends) would have been more upset than if the family cat had died.

I think the whole debate about how many cells constitute a person is irrelevant.

For me, the main problem with outlawing abortion is that the government would essentially enslave women for 9 months and reduce them to child-breeding factories. Childbirth is also extremely painful and sometimes dangerous. People should only go through that of their own free will.

Here's a nice map of abortion laws from wikipedia:



I know I sound like an elitist when I say this, but those orange countries aren't the most enlightened ones. That is where the True Believers live. People who actually believe the pope is a really big deal in the 21st century, and our non-pork eating friends.
Somehow half the world forgot to notice the sexual revolution half a century ago.

That whole 'inside' vs. 'outside' part is pretty important.

I can't disagree with you when you make the distinction between injury caused by the person being injured and injury caused by someone else.

I can point out that you're assuming a fetus is a collection of cells that constitutes a human being. Where is that coming from? What is necessary for something to be considered human and who decides that? Obviously it needs to be alive and a fetus is alive. Does it have to be capable of conscious thought and self-reflection in order to be considered human? Does it have to react to it's environment? A fetus reacts to it's environment but only once it's developed past a certain point. It doesn't even have a brain at first.

I don't even know what's necessary for something to be considered human but you haven't even said what it is? How do you know that a fetus is human? How do you know when it becomes human? You're just saying it's human but you're not saying what makes it human.

The inside vs. outside thing is absurd and shouldn't be used as an argument unless you're morally consistent. Say a mad scientist, for experimentation sake, shoved your baby back into your body somehow and the only way for it to survive is for you to wait out a few months and let it eventually get out of the body. Say it's not so painful that it exceeds the normal pain of pregnancy. Say also that you can safely kill the baby without risk to yourself by drinking/consuming something that kills it and disintegrates it. In this case, would you consider killing the baby to be moral because it's inside your body and you don't want it there?

Not only moral, but legal; no person has the right to use another person's body without their permission. Attempting to do so justifies homicide in every state.

^ I'd assume if that hipothetical person wanted the baby she'd go through basically the same again (from your description of it, everything would be just like a normal pregnancy) and if she didn't want it then she'd have aborted during the first pregnancy anyway, so the situation you're postulating wouldn't happen in the first place.

My main objection is the whole "collection of cells" argument in favor of abortion. The argument that "it's just a scraped knee" is WRONG because a scraped knee is not JUST a scraped knee. I'm not going off on another diatribe about it, but I think you get my point. Since I debunked the "scraped knee" argument, I've also debunked the "collection of cells" argument and even pointed out the inequitable distribution of justice between a scraped knee and an entire human being.


It does, and it is. And the same can be said of a blastocyst.

One important thing to note, because this will inevitably come up in discussion: Life doesn't start at conception. Life begins before conception because gametes are also living cells. The difference between sperm/ovum and a zygote is that sex cells are a part of a parent just as much as skin cells. They need no more concern than a scraped knee (haha). Sex cells die all the time just like skin cells die off, and we don't mourn them. There's no point. A zygote, on the other hand, is a unique individual formed from the union of sex cells. Apart from shared DNA, it has nothing to with its parents. It exists independently.


I say no. People suffering from dementia wouldn't be considered human. Comatose people wouldn't be considered human. The elderly who become unresponsive due to senility, stroke, or otherwise some loss of brain function wouldn't be considered human. So that argument fails.


No. Same reason. However, you kinda answered your own question:


Even single cell organisms react to their environment. And we all start out as single cell organisms immediately after mating of sperm and egg and just before cell division sets in. Not only that, but all cells have internal systems in place that have the same functions as large organs, like respiration, excretion, chemical manufacturing, etc.


See above. To clarify, it's a human if it is a separate, independent organism that came from human DNA. It doesn't matter if it's a single cell or a fully grown adult. And by "independent" I'm referring to a unique individual that exists apart from its parents. Embryos are one stage of development, and a new, growing human being in the womb should not carry the expectation that it is a permanent resident. I'm aware that new life is dependent on the mother for nourishment during the gestational stage, but like I said it is a unique individual and the arrangement is only temporary. Human life always knows what to do on its own. You don't have to tell a baby how to grow in the womb. It will normally do what it's supposed to do without any help.


It's human if it comes form a human. It's a dog if it comes from a dog. It's a monkey if it comes from a monkey. There's no "when" when it becomes something it never was...it always was what it is. The difference between an elderly person nearing the end of life and a blastocyst just getting started is a matter of its developmental stage. I don't feel the need to conform to some recondite definition of "human" to make my point.

Oh, and I'm also aware that the early stages of virtually all organic life forms share the same tadpole-y appearance. But no matter how much we all look alike, we are not all the same. Combined human sex cells yield humans, combined monkey cells yield monkeys, and so on. And if it is a human, it is deserving of full protection just as we expect for any other human being.

It's a human life, and no amount of arguing or discussion can change what it is. Sentience vs. sapience is utterly irrelevant (unless "sapience" is defined as having to do with the human species). Intelligence is irrelevant. Being able to feel pain is irrelevant. Either it is human or it isn't, and so far the only things humans carry in human wombs are more humans.

At any rate, one thing I highly dislike is playing silly word games. We can deconstruct words to meaninglessness all day long, but that isn't going to help me take counterarguments seriously. If words don't mean anything, we're not having a discussion right now, so it's irrelevant anyway. So suffice it to say that in my response to "What does it mean..." I like to keep my life simple. There's nothing esoteric or recondite about it. How do you make yogurt? From yogurt! How do you make a human? From a couple of humans!

I think we can safely agree that the new life formed at conception is human life.

The disagreement is about what to do with it. For that you move from biology to law. And for law to work, you need definitions.

I say it is a new human life once the sex cells unite.

However, whether we can LEGALLY do it justice depends on at which point we can start protecting it under the law. That's why I believe that for legal purposes life should be defined once a blastocyst has implanted in the uterine wall. The reason I say that is because, as we all know, implantation does not always occur, nor are we ever aware of exactly when that happens. It doesn't make sense to treat a non-viable blastocyst or embryo as a legally defined person since we have no immediate control over its life or death--it lived and died before we were even aware of it. Once implanted, however, it can sustain itself by taking nourishment from the mother's body. At that point, in my view, it can be granted legal protection.

I'm not 100% anti-abortion. I mean, I AM anti-abortion in the sense that I hate it. However, I recognize that there CAN be situations in which the mother has to choose between preserving her own life OR the life of the unborn. People already have the right to defend themselves against threats. In the case of rape, the ability to choose to have sex is taken away and thus the only way to get balanced justice is to at least allow the women the option of termination. However, if this happens, I think the man who raped her, leading to the abortion, should be put on trial for murder.

What homicide? Only the baby is being harmed if it gets killed.

Maybe she doesn't want to go through it again.

= justifiable homicide, if the zef/baby is using the mother's body agaisnt her will.