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Abortion: My personal experience

kerikiwi said:
I think it is, indeed, the case. Unless you would argue that a strand of my hair is a human being, and that it is I. It has noone else's DNA
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I don't think it is particularly useful to define a stand of hair as a "partial human being" - especially since (if I remember my biology) hair is composed of dead cells.
 
psionl0 said:
I don't think it is particularly useful to define a stand of hair as a "partial human being" - especially since (if I remember my biology) hair is composed of dead cells.
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In order to be 'dead' a cell first has to have been 'alive'.
And I am not describing a strand of hair as a partial human being, any more than I would describe a blastocyst as a partial human being. I am simply using it as an example of the 'shades of grey' involved.
 
psionl0 said:
That is not the case here. There is no such thing as a "partial" human being. A living thing is either a human being or it is not.
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I feel like we are about to descend into the semantic abyss...sigh.

Even if I agree with your assertion that there is no such thing as a "partial" human being (I don't), I'm pretty sure we disagree on the definition of "human being".
 
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psionl0 said:
I don't think it is particularly useful to define a stand of hair as a "partial human being" - especially since (if I remember my biology) hair is composed of dead cells.
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If I take a living cell from my body and place it on the ground next to me, are there now two KingMervs?
 
I am wondering about the effect of the whole making getting an abortion as difficult as possible?

Women seeking an abortion are likely to come in a range from "Do not want a baby now" to "Is currently not in a position to care for as much as a hamster".

The first group have the resources to get through the harassment, the second not.
It abandons the people with the greatest need and leaves a lot of kids to be raised by people not really capable of it.
 
KingMerv00 said:
If I take a living cell from my body and place it on the ground next to me, are there now two KingMervs?
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No, there is a KingMerv and a "partial" KingMerv. ;)

What I am trying to get at is that it is pointless to try and decide if a fetus is a human being or a child or anything else. At best it is just an exercise in semantics and at worst, a woman could be technically declared a murder based on whether she had an abortion yesterday or today.
 
psionl0 said:
No, there is a KingMerv and a "partial" KingMerv. ;)
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Are you implying my new twin doesn't deserve the same rights as me? He is not amused...or rather he would be if he had eyes, a brain, could read, and understood the concept of amusement.

What I am trying to get at is that it is pointless to try and decide if a fetus is a human being or a child or anything else. At best it is just an exercise in semantics and at worst, a woman could be technically declared a murder based on whether she had an abortion yesterday or today.
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Again, I think you are falling into Loki's Wager. Could you explain how you're not?

I find the best way to go about this kind of stuff is to find common ground. Let's start at the earliest stages of pregnancy...

Do you eat meat, hunt, or set mousetraps? If you do, you are willing to snuff out a fairly complicated organism. Those organisms can feel pain, fear, and can bond to other creatures. Even their most primitive brain functions are many orders of magnitudes more complex than anything a 5 day old zygote can muster. By any reasonable metric, the complex mammals are more like us than the zygote; they can move, think, and **** (in fact, getting them to stop *********** is tricky).

What does a zygote do? It drifts on a current.

Why is it OK to kill thousands of complex mammals while protecting a far less sophisticated ball of potentially explosive goo?

To answer my own questions, I do eat meat and I am pro-choice. I am only willing to give legal protection to objects with some level of consciousness. The level of protection is proportional to the capacity for consciousness. What about my setup is unreasonable to you so far?
 
psionl0 said:
Probably the fact that you presume to tell a woman when it is acceptable to have an abortion.
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Which is just a restatement of your position, not an argument at all.. or an answer to his question.

I can play that game too. You are wrong, therefore all of your arguments are wrong.
 
I presume to let citizens, scientists and legal and moral philosophers contribute to the dialectic in order to inform the legislature and the judiciary to make difficult decisions.

It's called social and moral progress in a republic whose leaders are selected democratically.

At least that's my solution.

There are others.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Which is just a restatement of your position, not an argument at all.. or an answer to his question.

I can play that game too. You are wrong, therefore all of your arguments are wrong.
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OK I will put it this way: Abortion means killing a fetus. There is no half-way measure here. Either you kill a fetus or you allow a pregnancy to go all the way.

Most of the debate here is about deciding when it becomes unacceptable to kill a fetus. Some factors other than just the age of the fetus might be considered but it still a question of "when".

How can that not be a dichotomy?
 
psionl0 said:
OK I will put it this way: Abortion means killing a fetus. There is no half-way measure here. Either you kill a fetus or you allow a pregnancy to go all the way.

Most of the debate here is about deciding when it becomes unacceptable to kill a fetus. Some factors other than just the age of the fetus might be considered but it still a question of "when".
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As a fan of honest language I don't mind abortion being called "fetus-killing." (Though actually a fertilized egg isn't a fetus; fetus is "after the embryonic stage," 10 weeks into the pregnancy. So at least we have a definition for when it's a fetus vs. an embryo.)

When I use such blunt language in polite conversation people are taken aback. Fortunately I worked in a newsroom for almost 30 years and didn't engage in a lot of polite conversation. Still, for publication we adhered to conventions. Slain soldiers were generally "fallen heroes."

In common parlance at 8 months everyone seems to agree it's a baby (another thread cites CDC saying fewer than 2 percent of abortions are performed after 20 weeks).

Usage of fetus vs. baby tends to depend on circumstance.
 
My great sympathies to you and your wife in this difficult situation. And I'm so sorry that idiotic, bigoted trolls felt the new to spam this up with their deluded crap.

I hope your wife is well. Take care of one another. *hugs*
 
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