** But why do people choose them? The problem is that this question is the one that remains after all the talk of is it right or is it wrong. Why do women choose to have abortions? **
We are talking about a living human organism with the innate potential for self-awareness, love, etc. I emphatically reject the notion that humanity is a function of size or appearance or that it can be attained or lost based on any other subjective variables. Such "practicality" provides no safeguard whatsoever against the infanticide espoused by Peter Singer or the wholesale extermination of the "medically unfit" carried out by the Nazis. By definition, anyone who is truly "brain dead" requires far more than a feeding tube to survive, as Maggie Sugar has noted on the Terri Shiavo thread.
It is not a human organism it only has the potential to be a human organism plus other animals have self-awareness and love yet we don't see it wrong to kill them to feed us.
"Over 50% of women who have abortions were using birth control the time they conceived. So much for the "slutty women having unprotected sex" argument." I was on birth control when I concieved...I was lucky and had a nice husband and all...but that's not always how it happens....why is it these pro-lifers want all women to not choose abortion but say absolutely nothing about the men who leave these women with children? That's a large reason so many women end up on welfare and in hud housing, sharing rooms with the roaches who lived there first. Please...you wouldn't even be able to start talking about outlawing abortion unless you could figure out some way to make the men take responsibility. We didn't ask to be the ones with the uterus. And it's not fair to expect only women to sacrifice...figure out some way to make it equal and I'll be all for outlawing abortion!! I just don't think it's going to happen Speaking about birth control..I just have one thing to say about that...insurance companies are trying to make it where they won't have to cover any birth control..they already stopped covering depo and a few others (depo is the one I know from experience)...however..they pay for viagra without blinking an eye. Is that what's going on here? More oppression of women while the men run free with no cares? Give me a break!
Can't biological fathers be forced to pay child support, regardless of marital status? Even so, I tend to think that adoption is probably a better alternative for the child if the mother has no intact relationship with the father. There are many pro-life organizations (Pregnancy Resource Centers, Catholic Charities, Birthright, etc.) that help women sort through these issues when dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
This is scientific nonsense. No. There is an ontological chasm between humans and other animals, which exhibit only sentience, as opposed to actual consciousness.
Just because you know the fetus will transform into a human doesn't mean it is human before it transforms, else the fact we know we will be dead will mean we are dead even before we are. Yet most humans choose not use said ablity putting the bulk of humanity at the same level of awarness of reality that the other animals have.
There is no "transformation" from one life form to another, just gradual development of the same organism. This is genetically and biologically indisputable.
Various reasons, of course... but I think an important factor is lack of education, and for some it's still pretty hard to get birth control... Look around here and you'll see threads 'I did this-and-this, can I still get pregnant' pop up with alarming regularity, considering this is 2005... you'd really think kids should know that kinda thing... also 'cause sex (at least sex before marriage) is still considered dirty and wrong by many, there are kids who don't dare go to the store to buy condoms, or don't dare get the pill. So they'd rather do without and hope they won't get pregnant, or use something unreliable, than risk being seen at the drugstore & maybe their parents finding out or whatever. I'm not too happy about kids having sex at a younger and younger age all the time, but neither do I believe they're gonna listen to my opinion... so if they're gonna do it, better they do have birth control & know how to use it correctly. Also, even when used correctly, birth control isn't 100%. Methods like the pill & condoms are pretty good, but something can go wrong. Next, as with everything in life, many people are great believers in 'it won't happen to me', so they just have unprotected sex and hope they won't get pregnant. Same thing that causes people to drive when drunk & do a dozen other things that aren't too smart. Of course, fate doesn't really care for their wishes & they get pregnant anyways. I really never met anyone who thought abortion was no big deal and actually chose to use it as a birth control method over all other methods... most people I know who had an abortion did fall into the last category, which I find sorta stupid but still isn't quite the same.
Yet it is philosophically disputable, would you call a sperm and egg a human? When a male jacks off is he killing humans? It is the same process.
"Can't biological fathers be forced to pay child support, regardless of marital status? Even so, I tend to think that adoption is probably a better alternative for the child if the mother has no intact relationship with the father. There are many pro-life organizations (Pregnancy Resource Centers, Catholic Charities, Birthright, etc.) that help women sort through these issues when dealing with an unplanned pregnancy." You would think Huck! You would think! But I had a coworker one time who had a daughter, and she said they never could find her baby's dad. Now, if he has a job they should be able to find him.... They don't actually try that hard. plus the same coworker had a bf who paid a percentage of his check to child support, that "they" decided...and then "they" put him in jail because he wasn't paying enough (even though they decided the percentage) ...you realize the whole time he was in jail the mother didn't see one red dime for her kid? She was getting money bfeore they put him in jail...while he was in jail he was making money for the city though...thats' what lawmakers care about..... if it doesn't make sense don't worry I'm right there with you....but remember they also are starving a woman to death(terry schaivo) so I would say that things are pretty messed up. Remember I said I would try and convince a pregnant woman to have an adoption instead of an abortion, all I'm saying is they have to actually put some effort into making the men be responsible before anybody is going to budge on the issue. I'm just saying you can't expect a woman to be a better person than a man, even if they happen to have the uterus...well maybe you can expect it but it won't happen.
Sperm and ova by themselves cannot develop as human beings in any environment. They must be genetically transformed through fertilization, after which point they no longer exist as isolated gametes. A new life form is brought into being.
You are only a process of your brain, meaning you only exist as long you body thinks. Thus the question is not if the fetus looks human or in the future can be human but does it think as if it has yet to think it has yet to exist and you can't kill something does not exist.
So what? It has the potential for self-awareness; it is not self-aware. Maybe some day it'll be possible to grow another human from my stem cells. Would it then become immoral for me to discard my own stem cells because they have the potential to become a self-aware human? Then what is the defining characteristic of a human? We've already established that just having human DNA doesn't cut it. I'm not sure what (if any) response you want from this straw man... I already said that that is not my view. Well to answer your question, yes, severe mental disabilities may affect a person's self-awareness and therefore their (philosophical) humanity, as far as I'm concerned.
Relying on science fiction is a pretty desperate argument. Again, isolated human cells have no innate potential to develop as human beings, unlike nascent human offspring. I'm just noting that your position on infanticide is arbitrary and inconsistent. A very popular idea in 1930s Germany . . .
It's a thought experiment. What makes the situation I described any different from abortion today? They're both just a clump of human cells. Maybe some day one of them will develop into a human being, maybe not. How is that any different than sperm/egg cells other than the number of chromosomes? It is neither. I have come to the conclusion that self-awareness is a GRADUAL process, not a light that suddenly comes on in an infant's head one day. It is YOUR position that is arbitrary, that one second before conception you have a sperm and egg cell and one second later you have a human being. How is my position inconsistent? I don't know how to make it any more clear that I think the moment of birth should be the cutoff point for legal protection.
For starters, it's sheer fantasy. There's no "maybe" involved at all. A human embryo will develop, given the proper environment, nutrition, etc. A sperm or an ova just as surely will not. You claim that newborns should be legally considered human, though you deny that they qualify metaphysically as human beings. You have no moral basis for opposing the infanticide now practiced in Holland and promoted by American "bioethicists" such as Singer.
Yes but is it okay to treat you like you a corpse since it is only a matter of time before you are? I say no since you are not dead at this moment just like a fetus is not yet alive.
