Human Rights

[Lunar]

[COLOR="Sienna"]Okay,
today my mom was doing the thingamajig for voting and stuff. She told me to come and answer this quesiton: "Is an unborn baby really a person?" I of course said yes, and since I'm going to be a pediatrician, of course I'm against abortion. So what do you guys think? Is an unborn baby really a person or is it just a blob? Is abortion still wrong if the woman is raped?[/COLOR]

[TheShinje]

[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=2]I agree with you. An unborn baby is a life, and going into semantics here, even the smallest grouping of cells is that life in the making. That is a bit like saying a car is not a car because only the chassis has been assembled. That chassis is a part of a car, it has the potential to be a whole car, if you catch my drift.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=2]I'm against abortion in most cases because that life means something. [/SIZE][/FONT]

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Alert: Can of worms being opened yet again in the Lounge. SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!

Fetus: Baby. Unborn: Life: Preborn.

Slice up the science any way you want, but when it's got its own heartbeat, its own fingers and toes, it's time to start considering that the blob you want to abort for the sake of your own convenience is actually alive. It has its own D.N.A., a unique clustering of genetic patterns that make it separate from the mother and the father as an individual. Am I crazy? Yes. Completely. I understand that rape is tragic, and that sometimes [and by sometimes I mean staggeringly low statistics still admit] the baby endangers the life of the mother. But while the mother has rights as individual to not be raped, murdered, etc, those same rights should be extended to the child growing inside the same mother.

It's very easy to assume that in all cases of conception because of rape the mother will want to abort, but everyone is different. Every case is different, and it's impossible to know. I know that if my grandmother had decided my mother was worth aborting I wouldn't be here. If my sister and brother's birth mothers had decided to abort, they wouldn't be living with me. I believe abortion is wrong in the vast majority of cases where it's being pitched as the only option to young scared women. And also in the case where it's being used as a form of birth control. It is dangerous for the woman's health not to mention the side effect of another human life extinguished.

Ask someone who has had an abortion what it was like after. Were there any physical or mental or emotional repercussions? This is a question nobody seems to care to ask, but I want to know.

I have a uterus, I have an opinion, but it's mine, and I won't be trying to make it yours too. [/FONT][/COLOR]

[TimeChaser]

Obviously, abortion is an unpleasant thing, and if we could solve a lot of the problems in society that lead to it, that would go a long way to reducing the need for it.

I do believe, however, that in cases such as rape or incest, it should be an available option, also in cases if the woman's health/life are in serious jeopardy due to the pregnancy or the delivery. My grandmother has told me many times about how her mother lost her mind due to a toxic pregnancy that she was not able to abort due to the taboo against such a proceedure. She had to take care of her younger siblings and her own mother (who now was more like a child) from the age of 8.

Late-term abortions are the real sticking point in this whole debate, but early term ones should not present us with as much of a moral quandry. I'll reiterate what I said in the 'Sex Education' thread:

A 3-day-old embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. By comparison, there are 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly; if we were going strictly by cell count, killing flies should disturb people much more. It is doubtful that embryos in early stages can even feel the kind of suffering we ascribe to them when they are aborted.

You might argue that that embryo is worthy of special consideration because of it's potential to become a human being, but with our advances in genetic engineering, any cell in your body can be a potential person, so every time you scratch your skin you are killing potential people.

There is also the fact that half of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion anyway, usually without the woman ever realizing she was pregnant. What are people who believe life begins at conception to think then? Should every spontaneously aborted embryo be considered a murder?

[Raiha]

[quote name='TimeChaser']
There is also the fact that half of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion anyway, usually without the woman ever realizing she was pregnant. What are people who believe life begins at conception to think then? Should every spontaneously aborted embryo be considered a murder?[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]That's ridiculous. These spontaneous abortions as a result of the female's body rejecting a foreign "not self" are not the result of a conscious decision. The body acting on its own without the input of the mind, or any logical thought process doesn't even fit the definition of murder.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[TimeChaser]

[quote name='Raiha'][COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]That's ridiculous. These spontaneous abortions as a result of the female's body rejecting a foreign "not self" are not the result of a conscious decision. The body acting on its own without the input of the mind, or any logical thought process doesn't even fit the definition of murder.[/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

Exactly my point. But a lot of the people who are the most vehemently anti-abortion fail to understand there is no consistency in their literalist argument.

They might say, "Abortion is an abomination in the eyes of God," but these are also people who believe God made human beings. Therefore, he built in this design component of spontaneous abortion. And what about the soul entering at the moment of conception idea?

Consistency, see?

Anyway, I won't harp on this any further, because it drags the thread a bit off track.

[eleanor]

[font=trebuchet ms]A woman who becomes pregnant because of a rape should absolutely have the choice of abortion. And granted, I think in cases of abortion after rape, the abortion is early and not late.

I don't expect anyone in this thread to act like they know the exact time a fetus becomes "living" (when it stops being a mass of cells and becomes a human), so I use the term 'early' generally. So in terms of abortion, I keep my opinion pretty simple: I'm ok with early abortions, not ok with 'late' abortions. And I hope to god no one brings up "partial-birth abortions".

[/font]

[Drizzt Do'urden]

[quote name='Calypso'][COLOR="Sienna"]Okay,
thingamajig [/COLOR][/QUOTE]

Oh yes, had to point out that I haven't heard that word since I was in high school.

Anyways back to the subject at hand....

Before I give my opinion, let me state some pros (not saying I agree or disagree yet) to abortion: 1: Over population 2: Could eliminate children born with Mental Handicapps 3: If proved (not sure if this has been proved/disproved yet, but years ago they were saying that many mass murders, serial killers, etc had a specific genetic defect in their brains someone with some [I]real[/I] knowledge on this subject can say if it's true or not) serial killers could be eliminated. 4: Rape victims have one less thing to "worry" about. ( I know that worry is a weak word to use, but it suits). Now those are just a couple of pros.

Cons: 1) The baby is technically alive once the sperm joins the egg and mitosis starts. 2) If you're religious or not, ending a life is a sin/wrong.


That's all the cons I can come up with, so from a logical stand point it should be the woman's right to choose, I on the underhand have to go with the cons and say I don't agree with it. I'm not a woman so I don't have to worry about carrying a baby for 9 months. I don't have to go through the struggle, but I don't understand why you couldn't carry the child and then give him/her away for adoption. There are always parents looking to adopt a newborn infant, most don't care about the circumstances.

I've seen first hand though how a woman's right to choose can be used for the wrong reasons. My fiancee's sister got preganent when she was 20, a year ago she got preganent again. Though the father begged her not to, she aborted the baby. The father was someone she had a one night stand with, and decided she didn't want to "deal" with another baby. I haven't spoken to her to this day, and probably won't for awhile now. I know a lot of you woman out there think like me and think that she shouldn't have been having sex when she knew the consequences. Still I'm sure others think, we'll if she couldn't take care of another baby and give it the love it deserved why have it? Well I'll answer that, the guy she fooled around with had an excellent job, and even offered to take full custody of the baby when he/she was born.

So I guess my main point is even if you're a rape victim. Why couldn't you carry the baby and just give it up? Would you be more apt to thinking you could if the government would pay for all your medical expenses?

[TimeChaser]

[quote name='Drizzt Do'urden']Cons: 1) The baby is technically alive once the sperm joins the egg and mitosis starts...

So I guess my main point is even if you're a rape victim. Why couldn't you carry the baby and just give it up? Would you be more apt to thinking you could if the government would pay for all your medical expenses?[/QUOTE]

It's a collection of cells. It's not a baby, it's a blastocyst. A fly is aslo alive and has far more cells than a brand new embryo, but we kill flies all the time.

As to the last part, think a moment about what you're saying: a woman is raped, she's been violated, a physically and psychologically traumatic experience. It's been forced on her, not of her choosing. If that happened to you, would you really want to endure 9 months of pregnancy and then labor?

Some women may actually feel that the baby's origin is not important, but I'm willing to bet the majority under that circumstance would want an abortion as soon as possible if they discover the rape has left them pregnant, and because it was the result of a violent crime, they should have the right to that option.

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]This may come as a terrible shock to you, but it doesn't remain a collection of cells for very long.

By 21 days, a baby's heart is beating and even so, the mother might not even know she's pregnant. At 30 days the brain is developing and growing as are the lungs, arms, and legs. By the time most women are aware of their pregnancies, their unborn have everything that makes a fetus a baby. And the nice part about pregnancy is that it isn't eternal. 9 months. 1-2 days of labor, less if you're lucky or get a C-section.

Abortion in and of itself can be a traumatic violent experience. If you've ever researched it or read medical journals, you'll know how it works. It can do long term damage to the woman's cervix and uterus and have untold ramifications on a woman's emotional and mental health. If a rape victim wants to terminate her pregnancy I won't be the one to say her nay. But you're sidestepping the issue here by only arguing for rape. And don't make bets when you don't know the odds first. In some cases, DNA in a baby can be traced to a father, and if the rapist was up till then not caught... Well I think you see what it can lead to. In other cases an abortion in a rape victim can just be her trying to hide or forget what happened to her instead of facing it. Study the cases first before making sweeping statements about it.

Sidenote: if anyone would like to tell me that partial birth abortions are okay, please do it now so I know who should be added to the list of: "People that should never be allowed to have children."[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Drizzt Do'urden]

[quote name='TimeChaser']
As to the last part, think a moment about what you're saying: a woman is raped, she's been violated, a physically and psychologically traumatic experience. It's been forced on her, not of her choosing. If that happened to you, would you really want to endure 9 months of pregnancy and then labor? [/QUOTE]

To answer the first part I accidentally already deleted, we kill flies. Flies are not human, from a religious stand point flies are just like every other animal put on this earth for humans, from a non-religious stand-point survival of the fittest baby.

Now as to the quote, I can never even imagine what a rape victim would go through, but as Raiha said they're just trying to run and hide. I'm not a psychologist by any means, but in a couple of the classes I've taken we've discussed this topic. First of all, trying to "hide" from the experience is more detrimental than facing it. Though the pain is there, and its natural to want to escape if you do, but facing it makes the pain go away quicker (or subside more, some people never get over it.). Secondally, keeping the baby can actually speed the emotional healing process. In every rape case study we went over, woman reported feeling like the attacker took their lives in the attack. Having the baby, whether you keep it or not, gave many of the woman the feeling that they didn't allow the man to take away another life.

Of course, since this is based on case studies, and as most people know psychology is a fickle science since many diagnosis/disorders are different from person to person none of what I said is guaranteed for anyone. Someone could feel like their lives ended that day, and they could never come back from it, but as Raiha said its only 9 months, plus most women don't know they're pregnant until possibly a month down the way, its not that long, and you'd be giving life to a family that truley wants it (if you don't go for adoption, you could really get the bastard and when he gets out of jail hit him up for back child support until his eyes explode.)

[Guest Crimson Spider]

Nothing like the can of worms. It smells bad, and once it's open you have to deal with it. As a Spider, though I am capable of eating worms I prefer not to.



Anyway, when we plead the case of rape, you really are pleading a very unusual case, and when broken down into statistics, you will find that this case isn't founded in it's original premises. Too bad statistics are very hard to find.

[url]http://www.pregnantpause.org/aborted/curerape.htm[/url]

Interesting read, but I'll get to that later. I'm quoting this website for one reason:

[quote]But in 1979 Dr Sandra Mahkorn, a professional rape counselor, studied 37 women who had become pregnant through rape. (This was apparently all she could find. Pregnancy from rape is, in fact, extremely rare. The small numbers make the study less statistically significant. But we are certainly not going to hope for more rape victims just so we can get more reliable studies!) Of the 37, 4 did not complete the study. Of the remainder, 28 chose to continue their pregnancies, and 5 chose abortion. So of real pregnant rape victims, only 15% chose abortion.

When questioned, most of these women said that they saw abortion as another act of violence. One woman said that she "would suffer more mental anguish from taking the life of the unborn child than carrying the baby to term".[/quote]

In a sense, you are pleading the case for a minority of a minority, and this is done under several false premises. The ideas that the woman having the baby is somehow a punishment or a horrible thing (babies are some of the most precious gifts that someone can have, and are truly a miracle of biology), that doesn't hold true to statistics. The idea that a woman who has an abortion will somehow get over being raped because of this, that is ignorant of the nature of how rape affects women (you can't just "forget" a tragic moment). The idea that you should "get back" at the rapist for killing his child, this is vengeance born hatred that will accomplish very little in regards to the physical or mental health of the mother.

Though I wonder, did anyone think about the [u][url=http://www.rebeccakiessling.com/]Child in this situation (link)?[/url][/u] This is another really good read, for it is the story of a woman who's mother attempted to abort her, but failed, and ended up just having the child. The woman is pleading the case for her existence in the past, and I will reference this later.


Now, for a more recent study: [url]http://www.nrlc.org/ABORTION/facts/reasonsabortions.html[/url]

Is a 2005 statistical analysis, and it is showing some rather unfortunate trends. For instance, only 7% of the abortions are from health factors, or rape. The other 93% are from social reasons, like them feeling they are "not ready for parenthood", or feels that she is "not mature enough". I'm thankful that my 18-year-old poverty stricken mother didn't consider those options when having kids. Indeed, the debate about abortions isn't about health or rape at all. What it is really about, is rights. Women want their rights.

Some more statistics:

[url]http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html[/url]

I'll point out the key points in this website (not nearly as interesting a read as the others).

[quote]Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.

• Forty percent of pregnancies among white women, 69% among blacks and 54% among Hispanics are unintended.

• In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. From 1973 through 2005, more than 45 million legal abortions occurred.

• Each year, about two percent of women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion. [/quote]

Hold up! Half of the pregnancies are unintended? How about not having unprotected sex or using contraceptives correctly? Only a very small percentage of these is from rape, and doesn't justify the 1/5th of pregnancies that end up on the cutting room floor. And only 15% of unintended pregnancies from rape are actually aborted, and rape victims have the emotionally better case to do so.

Nearly half of abortions are repeats? Haven't they learned their lesson? You would think that if you made such a morally and emotionally heavy decision as to have a life cut out from your own stomach, you would be sure that you would prevent yourself from having to do it again.

[quote]• Fifty percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 17%.

• Thirty-seven percent of abortions occur to black women, 34% to non-Hispanic white women, 22% to Hispanic women and 8% to women of other races.**

• Forty-three percent of women obtaining abortions identify themselves as Protestant, and 27% as Catholic.

• Women who have never married obtain two-thirds of all abortions.

• About 60% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children.[7]

• The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below 100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty* (112 vs. 29 per 1,000 women[3,1][/quote]

So, half of abortions are from unmarried youths and youngsters, and 75% of abortions are preformed on women in the poverty level. 66% of abortions are from out-of-wedlock relationships.


Remember: only 0.5% of abortions in 2005 were from rape. The other 99.5% were from instances in which the right of the mother was [u]never[/u] violated, or the abortion wasn't felt to be justified by the mother being molested. There are countless other means to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, each one cheaper and easier to exercise than the actual abortion. And yet... we have the statistics that we do. The one that annoys me the most is the 47% repeat rate, because this speaks about the nature of the culture we have more than any other statistic. It says "Oh, I'm too lazy to go buy some pills or a condom or to just keep my legs closed, but I'll gladly have the doctor reach inside of me, pull out a life, and then crush it before my very eyes".

And the justification for all of these comes from only 7% of the actual causes for abortion (some of which I'm not so sure even warrant an abortion). If it were just those 7% that were being legalized, I would shake hands, sign the bill, and call it a day, knowing that I am preventing over 1.12 million abortions this year.

But no, Abortions are not about circumstances out of your control. They are about hiding mistakes, an escape from being responsible for bad behavior, avoiding the responsibility of being a parent, avoiding circumstances that are uncomfortable, and about feeling oppressed when there are plenty of easier, safer, and cheaper alternatives that you could have gone towards. This isn't a "right" at all. It is an escape, and a medium to throw your hands up and cry "Oppression" whenever you have to do something you don't want to do. I refuse to respect this right because of circumstances in which it exists, the nature in which it is practiced, the cultural effects and endorsements, and the questionable moral/philosophical virtue of the act.

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For my personal story about abortions: Let me tell you a secret. According to the state of Nevada, I'm not a human. I am not a "human" because I was born early. Very early. I was born, fully and healthy, a full 24 hours before the "right to abort" warranty expired, and I became a human in regards to legal status. Nope, I never reached this point in my mother in which I became a "human".

As you can see, I really do not approve of these "definitions" in regards to human rights, because they are violated at every turn. When they are violated (premature births, for instance), they are just dismissed as an exception. But I wonder: what is the exception here? Does the status of the a creature really change only because of it's location? It is somehow different because it is on life support? Does it change because it requires certain circumstances to survive? Is the eventual projected ends really of no consequences to its current status?

If you want to draw a line, you must pick a point in which there is a definitive, absolute change that is NOT open to interpretation, and is a significant difference from one moment to another. Most cases that plead the "second trimester", I ask: what is the difference between the child now, and 5 seconds before it became a child? What you usually get is something about "cell count", as if size really mattered when considering who was human.

Definitively, there are only a few lines that you can draw in the sand that are reasonable. Conception, implantation, and the first heartbeat. Each of those is definitive, absolute, independent of the variance in child development between women, and can be substantiated in what is used to define a "human". The most definitive and absolute is conception.

If you plead the case of the heartbeat, you raise the question of why it is that the heart needs to beat before it is considered human. A beating heart is considered necessary for life, but the fetus is alive before the heart beats. A beating heart is a factor that leads to independence of life, but the fetus doesn't become "independent" at all from the outside sources. In fact, it remains dependent on others after it is born.

If you plead implantation, you raise the question of location again. Whether or not you hitch the embryo onto the side of a mother's organ, though necessary for development, isn't dissimilar from the actual birthing of the child, or the attachment of the umbilical chord.

But conception! Ah, now this is the one I use. The difference between conception and in-conception is the completed genetic code, the initiated automated response, and the complete identity of the baby is decided. The high mortality rate does nothing to change the nature of conception.


In regards to the medical reasons, the nature of the baby is a hotly debated topic, mainly because it can become a slippery slope. For the 3% of abortions that are over whether or not the child is likely to have problems, I think that simply having a condition doesn't actually warrant an execution. Things like, Down Syndrome, Lobster Claw, Siamese, and the like, those are difficult to overcome, but those aren't worthy of an execution. It never ceases to amaze me how people who have disorders, how happy they can be. Their life is more difficult, yes, but I would need to see a much more substantial case for declaring that someone who is albino shouldn't live.

The slippery slope, this is when the culture changes. Though it seems impossible now, two generations from now, it could be considered a fate worse than death to be considered blond, small, or dark skinned. If that culture isn't happy with the current definition of "disorder", then they will simply change it. That really is the biggest issue regarding the status of the child: the arbitrary nature of it all. I'm sure that there are plenty of syndromes that are lethal, and these I am more apt to allow.

For health reasons in regards to the mother, this is usually the case that I will allow. Though I do have a personal history of people being told to abort children because of medical problems and nothing bad happens (my grandmother, my mother's best friend, and my sister), I will still allow this case, because it is the lesser of two evils. The philosophy of the lesser of two evils is that if two outcomes have both positive and negative outcomes, the least negative outcome may be chosen as long as the negative side effect is *not* the desired outcome.



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And on my final note, the you probably noticed the unusual title of this post. This is a question on the philosophy of identity: When something is considered a thing, when something changes, and the like.

Abortionists, like many other people, see people as having static identities. You are what you are, and then you suddenly jump and change identity under certain conditions. From a child to an adult, from democrat to republican, from straight to gay, it is seen as one gigantic leap of absoluteness. Essentially, who you are changes abruptly.

But, I raised a question personally in life as I grew up: Why is it that someone is suddenly considered different, instead of just having the very nature of change and progression being part of the identity? As I grew up, I noticed that I was never "different" from day to day. I was who I was, from when I was five years old, to when I am 21 years old. My teachers, my parents, they all expected me to suddenly be "different" whenever I changed grades or schools, but there was no reason to. I was the same person yesterday as I was today.

From studying quantum physics, you learn the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, in which you find that the wave like property of an electron prevents it from ever being pinpointed. Instead, the electron is perceived as a wave, and the nature of change becomes part of the electron.

I apply a similar tactic to defining humanity. If you take us across the dimension of time, you will find that our existence as an entirety is strewn across this dimension as a band, with our conception at one end, our death at the other, and everything in between. If you go so far as to attach the personal identity to this band, you create a dynamic identity, where this person's identity includes change, and they remain wholly themselves throughout time.

In this same consideration, we find that the difference between a fertilized egg cell and a full grown adult is a matter of change, and of time. An Egg Cell, without intervention (assuming free will), will become an adult, or what we commonly consider a "person".

Abortions serve to prevent something from obtaining the automated status of "human" through killing the embryo, and as seen above this is rarely ever for a good reason. The only way someone doesn't make the case for murder is saying that the embryo isn't human yet, though in nearly every aspect you are pretty much killing "someone" by preventing them from reaching the rest of their time line.

Rebecca Kiessling provides a very nice example of how abortionists refuse to peer into the future, and only look at the exact and current moment in time. Essentially, when you argue for abortions, you are saying that Rebecca should not be alive. That her life wasn't worth living.

If you assume a dynamic identity instead of a static one (by and by a much more logical choice), the entire argument about the inhumanity of a fetus falls apart, because to call a fetus inhumane is to assume that what something will be is completely irrelevant to what something is currently, and likewise what something currently is is irrelevant to what it was in the past.

[Vicky]

[quote name='Drizzt Do'urden'] 2: Could eliminate children born with Mental Handicapps [/QUOTE]

[size=1]Oh! Yes! Like the woman who got an abortion on the grounds of her child having a clef pallet!

Seriously, aborting a baby because it has a mental handicap doesn't seem like a pro at all. If you can't handle the child yourself because it's handicapped... which you should seriously reconsider being a parent if you can't do that... then the child can still have a chance of life at least. If we eliminated children with mental handicaps, then we wouldn't have Matt Savage, Derek Paravicini, Gary Numan... (autism and savant syndrome all count as 'mental handicaps').

But if you're getting technical about what's considered a handicap then it's still wrong. My mother takes care of people with mental handicaps and it would be rather saddening if they were never given a chance because abortion is an option in that case. You can always give the child up at least.

On another note I don't agree with abortion unless it's done as early as possible for the right reasons (rape, mainly). Aborting a child because you got knocked up by accident is ridiculous, as well as half the abortion stories I've heard... and the video we saw of a live abortion. Not nice.

A lot of the pros of abortion can be dealt with in different ways, as well. I just think some 'mothers' make the choice or justify it with absolutely stupid reasons - as I mentioned earlier, one woman aborted her child on the grounds of them have a clef pallet on the very last moment she could. That's definitely above 16 weeks, if I remember correctly.[/size]

[Lunar]

[COLOR="Sienna"]OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!! This thread freakin' exploded and I just went to sleep!!! Since the baby is a real person whether it has a disability or not, abortion is not really a pro. As for a woman who was raped and got pregnant, why can't she just give the baby up for adoption? Sure adoption isn't the best option(it rhymes! XD) it's still better then killing it. I don't think there are any pros to abortion. Alot of women abort babies 'cause they are too busy with their own lives and don't care. What goes around comes around, whether they believe it or not, and one day they are going to pay for it. To Drizzt: Thingamajig is an awesome word!

[B]EDIT:[/B] And [B]CrimsonSpider,[/B] you [I]had[/I] to have the longest post? I have more stuff to add. I just woke up and thanks to [I]some[/I] people (CrimsonSpider, I"m talking to you,) it took me a long time to read. When you really think about it, it's not really the baby's fault the woman got raped. So why have the baby suffer for it? [/COLOR]

[Guest Crimson Spider]

That is a compressed version. I am really restraining myself, and just staying on the point that I try to make with the first and second sections.

What can I say? If I have a lot to write, I'm going to write a lot.

[Lunar]

[quote name='Crimson Spider']That is a compressed version. I am really restraining myself, and just staying on the point that I try to make with the first and second sections.

What can I say? If I have a lot to write, I'm going to write a lot.[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Sienna"]Ooh! It's fine. I really like that you write alot. That'll give us something to think about. So write away. Just please don't make it too overwhelming, 'kay?;)[/COLOR]

[Rachmaninoff]

I'm so ignoring most of this thread or rather I'm not responding to it. I don't have the time to respond to each opinion so I'll simply go with what I think of the original one.[quote name='Calypso'][COLOR="Sienna"]Is an unborn baby really a person or is it just a blob? Is abortion still wrong if the woman is raped?[/COLOR][/QUOTE]I think an unborn baby (or cells) is a potential human. I say potential since the mother's own body will miscarry it naturally if it's incapable of surviving.

In principle I think abortion is wrong, but there are cases where I think it's necessary. One example is if health wise it can kill the mother and the baby as well. The argument over rape, well before I say anything about that, I think a lot of people are ill informed on that one.

The reason why hearing someone is pregnant from rape is so rare is because of options offered to someone who was raped. If a woman doesn't take the pill (or is using other means to prevent pregnancy), they are offered pregnancy prevention treatment. Pregnancy prevention treatment consists of taking 2 estrogen pills when they first get to the hospital and 2 more pills 12 hours later. This treatment reduces the risk of pregnancy by 60% to 90%.

If for some reason, like not reporting the rape or the treatment doesn't work and they still want an abortion, then I am pro-choice in that it's their right to make that decision.

[Retribution]

[font=Arial]I support the right of every woman to choose.

I don't think third trimester abortions should be allowed, and generally I don't see why a woman would wait so long to get an abortion.

While I find it disturbing there are people who think abortion should not be allowed in cases of rape and incest, I also applaud them for their consistency of belief.

I wonder what the pro-life camp on OB thinks about contraception. Should it be promoted as a means of decreasing abortion, or should it be rejected as a means of stopping (and in some cases prematurely ending) the growth of a fetus?[/font]

[Raiha]

[quote name='Retribution'][font=Arial]
I wonder what the pro-life camp on OB thinks about contraception. Should it be promoted as a means of decreasing abortion, or should it be rejected as a means of stopping (and in some cases prematurely ending) the growth of a fetus?[/font][/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]There's a difference between stopping sperm from getting to egg and stopping a fertilized egg from getting to implant in the uterus.

There are levels of contraception that stop life from existing and stop an existing life from being allowed to continue as a life. And I also resent being thrown into a camp that is labeled simply as "pro life." Like most things, there are degrees of people who are liberal and conservative, angry and not angry, okay with group politics and not okay with group politics.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Lunar]

[quote name='Retribution'][font=Arial]I support the right of every woman to choose.

I don't think third trimester abortions should be allowed, and generally I don't see why a woman would wait so long to get an abortion.

[B]While I find it disturbing there are people who think abortion should not be allowed in cases of rape and incest, I also applaud them for their consistency of belief.[/B]

I wonder what the pro-life camp on OB thinks about contraception. Should it be promoted as a means of decreasing abortion, or should it be rejected as a means of stopping (and in some cases prematurely ending) the growth of a fetus?[/font][/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Sienna"]Why is it disturbing? Why make the baby suffer? who's in the pro-life camp?[/COLOR]

[Nerdsy]

[quote name='TimeChaser']It's a collection of cells. It's not a baby, it's a blastocyst. A fly is aslo alive and has far more cells than a brand new embryo, but we kill flies all the time.[/quote]

[color=deeppink]This doesn't mean anything. Comparing humans, even at the intitial stages of development, to a fly just doesn't work.

No matter how many cells a fly's brain has, whether it be more or fewer than a human at any stage in it's development, it is still not human. And killing something not human is not the same as killing a human.

Cows, I presume, have more cells than a human based upon it's size. If that's not actually true (I can't seem to verify it), a whale almost certainly does. Is it then okay to kill and eat humans or burn their fat?[/color]

[TimeChaser]

[quote name='Nerdsy'][color=deeppink]This doesn't mean anything. Comparing humans, even at the intitial stages of development, to a fly just doesn't work.

No matter how many cells a fly's brain has, whether it be more or fewer than a human at any stage in it's development, it is still not human. And killing something not human is not the same as killing a human.[/color][/QUOTE]

But the point is that it's just a clump of cells, even though it's from a human. It has no brain, no neurons, it cannot suffer like a fully developed human being. It isn't a human being at that stage and won't be for several months at least.

[Nerdsy]

[quote name='TimeChaser']But the point is that it's just a clump of cells, even though it's from a human. It has no brain, no neurons, it cannot suffer like a fully developed human being. It isn't a human being at that stage and won't be for several months at least.[/QUOTE]

[color=deeppink]Why, exactly, is it not human? And why should I believe that it's not over "human life begins at conception?"[/color]

[Raiha]

[quote name='TimeChaser']But the point is that it's just a clump of cells, even though it's from a human. It has no brain, no neurons, it cannot suffer like a fully developed human being. It isn't a human being at that stage and won't be for several months at least.[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]I'm assuming you've never read my post, nor taken a Human Conception and Development course in college, much less opened a biology book. It has a brain developing at five weeks and from that point on, it'll develop far enough to recognize the mother's voice from within the womb, and sense the world around it before birth.

A baby can be in distress while still in the womb. In fact, that's the medical term given to a baby that's suffering or close to death. Who are you to presume what a human being is? If we use your rubric, it isn't alive until it's outside of the mother. So while it's still in the womb, even at six or five months when it can still survive outside of the mother's body we can kill it? Oh that's nice.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Gavin]

[SIZE="1"]You know normally I would bang my head off my desk several times in horror this thread has reappeared, proceed to quote several people and then engage in the pointless debate. This time around I'll skip the second part like most other people and just make my point and watch the drama unfold.

I'm personally against abortion in all but the most serious cases, for example where the carrying of the child to term will result in the deaths of both mother and child. I oppose abortion primarily because it acts most often as a convience tool to relieve people of their own stupidity when it should only be available to those in the most dire of circumstances. This abuse I think really undermines any serious dialogue between the pro-life and pro-choice movements.

I don't feel this way because of any religious inclination or political alignment, I just really believe that the destruction of human life is not something which should be held up as a "right" to be affirmed. I find such a concept to be genuinely repugnant. Equally I find the idea of debating life based on things such as cell-count or stage to be ludicrous given the examples that have already been used in the thread.[/SIZE]