Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Nov 1, 2012.

?

Do I support the proposition? (see post #2)

Poll closed Nov 11, 2013.
  1. Anti-abortion: Yes

    22.2%
  2. Anti-abortion: No

    5.6%
  3. Pro-choice: Yes

    44.4%
  4. Pro-choice: No

    16.7%
  5. Other (Please explain below)

    11.1%
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  1. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    I'm sorry, I must have missed it. Link me... "I can, I have"

    Exactly when does "a fetus becomes a baby"? I thought there was no differentiation between a foetus and a "baby", aren't they one and the same in your world? If you could provide a definitive answer to this question backed by scientific support or at least some simile thereof this entire debate might coalesce and transform into a discussion about the OP - namely, if a foetus is a person, how does that change society?

    You know, as in what then?

    So, to your questionable assertion, "how is it not possible to state when a fetus becomes a baby?". Go ahead, illuminate us...
     
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  3. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    4,201
    Hi Syne. Nice of you to join us.

    Can you explain this concept of triage in some practical way, perhaps enumerating the specifics of how it would apply in real world situations so that the dolts of the world could comprehend what you're advocating? It would be really, really helpful if you could provide links and citations to examples where the "triage" model provided an outcome generally agreed to be a success. I'm sure you have plenty of references of that sort, right?
     
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  5. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    By the way Syne, I'm still awaiting a response to this...

    Really? By that logic all women should attempt to become pregnant as often as possible, right? After all, what is enduring a little "temporarily poor quality of life" in conceiving and carrying a child to term compared to all that "potential full life" inherent in those wonderful ova and spermatozoa?

    All these selfish people wasting gametes every day - tsk, tsk - think of the precious latent life going unfulfilled.

    Tell me why your logic doesn't extend back before implantation, indeed, even before conception. Or does it? Do you prescribe to the Catholic stereotype of "go forth and multiply", preferably as often as possible? If no, why not? Where is the fallacy in labeling all gametes "potential life" in need only of coming together wih a partner? Is it just a personal choice on your part Syne? If so, feel free to follow your choice, I don't think any pro-choice people will attempt to limit the number of offspring you produce. OTH, pro-lifers always seem to want to proscribe others' choices, right? Kind of by definition.

    On another topic, why don't you address the original issue in this thread on its own merits as Tiassa keeps requesting of the posters here? What happens if Personhood is granted at conception? What's the matter, don't you have the courage of your convictions? Why not stand up and be counted as a proponent of police investigations into every miscarriage? Shouldn't the enforcement of murder charges be stepped up when the woman knew or should have known that her behavior could harm that child within her womb? How about mandatory requirements imposed on all health care providers to ascertain if a nominally "dead" woman is pregnant so that heroic measures can be taken to keep the incubator alive in all possible cases? Ponder the ramifications of your stance if enforced as law just for a moment. Frightening, right? So let's just not talk about that subject...​
     
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  7. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    A lawyer is ethically bound to do his best within the constraints of the law. And you have entirely failed to show any statement from the Catholic church agreeing with that legal argument or even directly that "they would never allow their lawyers to make such an argument on their behalf again". There are only affirmative statements in that article, which is apparently too hard for you to read, at least without heavy bias.

    Working to achieve your aims within a system you do not wholly agree with does not make you a hypocrite. They are simply using a legal definition of personhood, as defined by abortion law, to make a point. They believe they were in the right and their lawyer is tasked with proving that within the existing constraints of the legal system.

    Again, abortion is warranted in the case of serious health risk to the mother.

    I am not advocating personhood at conception. Anti-contraception is almost exclusively a Catholic stance, and Protestants are over twice their number. Get your facts straight.

    I agree. The primary solution is better access to contraceptives. But we have not seen an example of this coupled with more restricted abortion access.

    I am not advocating banning any contraceptives. I have even advocated better access to emergency contraceptives. Try to keep up.

    Nonsense reductio ad absurdum. Potential life is not the only criteria of my argument, but it is convenient to attack it as if it were, huh?

    Potential life only takes on ethical significance when personhood and right to life enters into it.

    Why should any of the posters here argue a position they do not advocate? Would I be justified in demanding that you argue the merits of the death penalty if you do not agree with it? Those are not my convictions, so such demands are only fallacious straw man arguments.

    Maybe you could answer my counter-example. Why are you not advocating the rights of deadbeat fathers to opt out of a pregnancy? Only allowing a woman to do so, and forcing her decision to be financially supported by the man is sexist.
     
  8. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    Really? When then, exactly, are you advocating "personhood" begins?

    But what about all that "potential" life being wasted here?

    Yes, that is where you seem to be trying to take this discussion. Fisk you.

    But it is a mainstay...

    Are you implying that I should only attack the strong points of your argument?

    Great. Exactly when does the embryo's personhood and right to life overthrow the pregnant woman's personhood and right to life?

    What, exactly, are you arguing? Are you saying your arguments are in support of a position which you do not advocate?

    What then, exactly, are your convictions? To wit:

    Why are you and your brethren unable to address these questions? Can you not read? Do you not care? Are completely and totally illiterate? WTF?

    I don't recall you ever asking about the father's rights, deadbeat or not. In keeping with your persona, I thought you believed father's rights inviolate. What, exactly, do the rights of the father have to do with the current discussion though? Useful perhaps for deflection from the central topic? Not going to work out for you Syne...
     
  9. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    That's your answer? No answer at all?

    Pray tell, when exactly, specifically, explicitly, categorically do "personhood and right to life enters into it"?
     
  10. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    Amended to ask for an on point, detailed response... (Let's see how deep we can nest these quotes before you respond substantively...)


    Or maybe, but doubtfully, we could address the OP topic. For some reason, this seems to be off limits to you and your gaggle...

     
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Flashback and Appeal

    On Avoidance of Implications

    I came across an old post while looking for another old post. Anyway, it might seem familiar in the present discussion:

    Now, the premise justifying the anti-abortion argument is the assertion that life begins at conception, and therefore the organism is endowed with certain, inalienable rights, including primarily the right to life.

    Yet you refuse to discuss the extended implications of what this means? Is it because the issue becomes too complicated for you to figure out? Or maybe you are capable of seeing how complicated the situation becomes, and are unwilling to have that discussion because you don't like what it suggests?



    Six years ago. Wow.

    Here's something else familiar: The question remains unanswered.

    Not that the other member could help it; she was eventually booted for trolling and intellectual dishonesty. In the month and a half that thread went on, the advocate never answered. In the two and a half years the advocate remained at Sciforums after that, the question was never answered.

    Fourteen months.

    Fourteen hundred posts.

    Two threads.

    The question still remains unanswered, by anyone who would advocate LACP.

    Fourteen months? Six years? Forty years? What, really, is the difference?

    It's quite clear that the one thing that doesn't matter to LACP advocates is the woman carrying a pregnancy. I would say the one person that doesn't matter, but it is unclear whether or not women are people under the LACP argument. Indeed, it may be that the problem with the topic proposition is that in order to suspend a woman's human rights, she must first have them.

    In the gay fray, we have this notion called "the sufficiently invisible lesbian". It refers to the tendency of anti-gay movements to focus on gay men. It was a more graphic image and, hey, looking at pictures of two sisters having lesbian relations while wearing nothing but airbrushed body paint is an American tradition.

    No, really, it's the weirdest thing. Throughout the gay fray, lesbians have literally had to muscle their way into the fight. It's like Stonewall in slow motion. (As the police tried to wrangle a dancing kick-line of self-proclaimed nellies into the paddy wagon, a local lesbian started rocking the truck and demanding her equal right as a woman to be arrested. She literally had to attack a police vehicle to get them to notice her. Sufficiently invisible, indeed; it makes a cute metaphor.)

    The problem with the idea of the sufficiently invisible woman in the abortion dispute is that it creates a logical rift that really can't be reconciled. Woman is at the center of this dispute, and anti-abortion advocates who remind that there are two "people" involved invariably go on to ignore the woman.

    This thread is actually evidence of that.

    It's one thing to point to the extremity of the troll from six years ago. That really was a ... (ahem!) "unique" character. Yet given the uproar over whether it is appropriate to note observable misogyny suggests that the slightest whiff of comparison between the present refusal to answer the implications of LACP has nothing to do with the former.

    Nor, incidentally, does some people's inability to distinguish between a zygote and a vampire have anything to do with the same thing happening six years ago. (Or, in that case, it was the difference between a zygote and a twenty-four year old human male. That's right. Living with your parents while you work to pay off your college student loans is no different, by that assertion, than being a zygote in the womb.)

    The thing is that there is a topic question, and as with the past, it is being desperately avoided, evaded, and deflected. We have discussed fetal rights, reiterated personhood arguments, considered men's rights, and even had a back and forth about the rights of corpses. We even have people setting a prerequisite demanding fulfillment of a fallacy.

    So here's the question: What is the objection to discussing the impacts of LACP on women?

    Really: Why is this such a difficult subject for anti-abortion advocates to even acknowledge?
     
  12. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    I miss Orleander..

    Pretty much hit the nail on the head.. Which brings me to the issue of pro-lifer's demanding that safety buffer zones around clinics be removed so they can harass, intimidate and threaten women entering the clinics... After one couple walk past without issue because the man accompanying the woman was there to protect her and by the article, he did not seem like the type they would want to harass, a woman approaches the clinic alone and they pounced..

    Another woman enters the gauntlet. When she’s about ten feet from the gate, a protester steps out of the prayer line. She moves toward the woman, then walks alongside her.

    The protester, Kyleen Finnegan, 29, is a volunteer with Generation Life, a local group that strives to “end abortion” by promoting chastity. Finnegan doesn’t know why the woman she’s talking to is going to the clinic—it could be for could be contraception, a routine appointment, or an abortion. But everyone is treated as if they are going to have an abortion.

    Finnegan, visibly and happily pregnant, tells the woman that she can help her, and that everyone there loves her. She’s holding pamphlets that she offers women entering the clinic. On the inside flap, the paper is full of bullet points beneath the headings “Abortion can hurt you.” The problems range from the obvious, like cramping, to the outright erroneous, like “later infant disability.”

    The information in the pamphlet was provided by the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund.

    Finnegan tells me later that she estimates that over the years, she has personally dissuaded approximately ten women from obtaining abortions, or at least from entering the clinic. Today was not one of those days. The woman she approached didn’t stop and didn’t take a pamphlet; she turned into the gate, entered the clinic, and signed in with the man behind the bullet-proof glass.

    At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is debating buffer zone laws that would protect patients visiting a reproductive health clinic from people like Finnegan, what people in the anti-choice movement might not understand is that a person doesn’t have to shoot a doctor or physically assault a patient to cause harm. It’s harmful to hand a women a piece of paper with false medical claims, and it’s harmful to be a presence that causes a woman to seek somewhere more underground.

    So they do not know if she is pregnant or why she is there, the just harass her as though she is sexually active and pregnant. The direct implication is that to the protester's outside, she is a whore and they can help her and hand her pamphlets that promote chastity.

    As despicable as this is, it's not the worst.

    Sometimes the men who accompany their partner or relatives and those who volunteer to protect the patients entering these clinics are sexually harassed as well:

    Volunteer escorts say that protesters often try to intimidate them with the same techniques they see them use on patients.

    “They’ll target young women, to try and tell us about the love of Jesus, and that it’s not too late for us,” said Jane.

    “They’ve definitely been more aggressive toward men,” said Eli, a 31-year-old escort at Locust Street.

    Eli says he’s been physically threatened himself, and has witnessed protesters try to bait male companions accompanying women into the clinic with hyper masculine taunts.

    “[They say] ‘man up,’ ‘be a man,’ ‘be tough,’ ‘don’t be weak and let your woman do this,’ ‘don’t let this happen to your baby.’”


    And on at least one occasion, their harassment resulted in disastrous consequences. Their harassment and abuse and threatening behaviour drove one woman to go to a different clinic:

    But Sen. Farnese, a former volunteer clinic escort at the Philadelphia Women’s Center, told RH Reality Check that he is determined. He’s motivated, he says, by what he witnessed as an escort before joining the state senate.

    “There was literally a couple feet distance between the protesters and the front door … and at times [it was] extremely intimidating,” said Farnese, adding that he recalls protesters “shoving plastic baby things” in patients’ faces.

    “Sometimes, [patients] were so upset and distraught that they just turned around [and left],” Farnese told RH Reality Check. “These women are going to go somewhere. They’re going to exercise their right. The question is, are we going to allow them to exercise it safely?”

    [HR][/HR]

    At least one woman injured in Kermit Gosnell’s “house of horrors” clinic—less than three miles away from the clinic on Locust Street—went there after feeling she was unable to face a mob of protesters.

    Davida Johnson was 21 years old and coping with an unwanted pregnancy when she was “frightened away” by protesters at a downtown Philadelphia facility.

    “The picketers out there,” Johnson told the Associated Press, “they just scared me half to death.”

    According to Johnson, Gosnell slapped her before tying her down before the ghastly procedure. She has said that she suffers a lifelong condition as a result.


    As I said, I miss Orleander. She was absolutely correct. It's not about the baby. It's about the woman and always has been.
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    (sigh)

    Why is it impossible? All I'm asking you to do is identify something without telling you anything about what it is, and some things about what it isn't.

    This is nothing more than you've asked for with your demand for proof of negative.

    And now you say it's impossible?

    Okay, so why are you making that demand?

    It's not. But you argued:

    "I can, I have, but you refuse to, why?"

    See that boldfaced part? That's where you're lying.

    Topic Proposition: As is well-known, in questions of pregnancy and termination, I assert a dry-foot policy; as long as an organism exists inside another person, it is that other person's jurisdiction.​

    I mean, come on, dude, that was at the outset. Do you really want me to spend however much time harvesting the rest of this thread for similar statements?

    #14: Indeed, it's why I have a dry-foot policy; my resolution is to simply assert that what takes place inside a woman's body is her own business.​

    And there is also the long-running ontological inquiry in that post: "Do you really see no practical difference between a child that lives as an independent organism outside its mother and one that lives as a dependent organism inside a woman?"

    I've been pretty clear about this from the outset, and you're also one who's been around long enough that one would expect you to be included in the phrase, "As is well-known".

    Indeed, it kind of reminds me of the time YourEyes, who has actually been around in other forms since 2006, asked me to clarify that I was on the liberal side of American politics.

    As I noted then, I had not realized there was any real question about my leftism.

    As I will note here: I had not realized there was any real question about my stance on LACP.

    I mean, is there something confusing about those statements I've noted? Do I really need to go and extract every such statement I've made in this thread?
     
  14. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    15,058
    It's not frightening. It just seems really really odd that some people have so little practical consideration that they think that granting personhood at conception leads to such absurd scenarios as above, such as the police being requested to investigate every miscarriage.



    - - -

    Triage (/ˈtriːɑːʒ/ or /triːˈɑːʒ/) is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. The term comes from the French verb trier, meaning to separate, sift or select.[1] Triage may result in determining the order and priority of emergency treatment, the order and priority of emergency transport, or the transport destination for the patient.

    Triage may also be used for patients arriving at the emergency department, or telephoning medical advice systems,[2] among others. This article deals with the concept of triage as it occurs in medical emergencies, including the prehospital setting, disasters, and emergency room treatment.

    The term triage may have originated during the Napoleonic Wars from the work of Dominique Jean Larrey. The term was used further during World War I by French doctors treating the battlefield wounded at the aid stations behind the front. Those responsible for the removal of the wounded from a battlefield or their care afterwards would divide the victims into three categories:[3][4]

    Those who are likely to live, regardless of what care they receive;
    Those who are likely to die, regardless of what care they receive;
    Those for whom immediate care might make a positive difference in outcome.

    For many emergency medical services (EMS) systems, a similar model may sometimes still be applied. In the earliest stages of an incident, such as when one or two paramedics exist to twenty or more patients, practicality demands that the above, more "primitive" model will be used. However once a full response has occurred and many hands are available, paramedics will usually use the model included in their service policy and standing orders.

    As medical technology has advanced, so has modern approaches to triage which are increasingly based on scientific models. The categorizations of the victims are frequently the result of triage scores based on specific physiological assessment findings. Some models, such as the START model may be algorithm-based. As triage concepts become more sophisticated, triage guidance is also evolving into both software and hardware decision support products for use by caregivers in both hospitals and the field.[5]

    /.../

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage



    Perhaps one thing some people don't understand is that pregnancy is a potential crisis situation, thus calling for triage.
     
  15. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    While you disregard and ignore the reality that women are actually and literally being arrested for miscarrying their baby... Perhaps you can explain why you refuse to acknowledge this fact and instead pretend that none of it is happening while plugging it?
     
  16. Capracus Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,324
    He thinks that personhood for a fetus should begin when it attains the neurological capacity of a brain dead full term baby.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2014
  17. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    No it very diffrent, I asked you to state your moral postion on something and the ethical reasoning you have for it, not for guess a thing in my hand by stating a few things it is not. There is nothing stoping you from discribing why you beleive a fetus is not a person, stating when you beleive a fetus becomes a baby, what rights you think a fetus deserves, when and why.

    Yet I would likely have to go though thousands of guesses to guess what is in your hand, assuming you even want to tell me, you could just keep me guessing forever in fact.

    Is it wrong of me to ask your ethical stance and your reasoning for it? All I've gotten from you in deepth of ethical reasoning is abortion is rightous because otherwise it would destroy women rights, ok so when does it become wrong, for example a women decide she want sto kill a fetus just moments from birth, would that be right to you? What if she wants to kill it after it is born. Some argue that a neonate is not enough of a person to be worth murder charges, maybe instead manslaughter, or even something less, and their reasoning is all a neonate is a screaming, suckling shitting ball of impluses and is not yet conscious or have sociel standing, do you agree or disagree?

    Why can't you answer those kinds of questions? They are not asking you to even prove anything, or to guess correct answers, or anything of the nature your presented, yet you claim it wrong of me to ask on a thread that by it very title demands we explore the ethics of personhood!

    and I asked why! Why is said organism, no matter if it a potential person or a fluke worm, strictly the juristdiction of that person, what are your ethical reasons? and then I ask for how your ethics deals wtih specific situations: What if the organism could be removed and live on its own, is viable, would it still be in the jurisdiction of said person to kill it instead? What if the person was a beating-heart cadavor, can the legal claiments of that cadavor now own the fate of that organism as if it was inside them, why or why not? Ect, ect, ect. I've asked these questions before in diffrent ways and forms repeatedly now but get no answer from you, other then arguements or slander by you do discredit me from asking.

    No you could just answer my questions now, if I missed it just repeat it, nothing wrong with repitition I've done it repeatedly now.

    So:

    When does a fetus become a baby? - can it be aborted/killed just before this point, morally?

    what rights does a fetus have in regards to...

    - its hostess being dead
    - its hostess intending to mutilate it
    - its hostess being ill fit to birth it
    - its hostess being ill fit to raise it
    - its hostess intending to destroy it for profit as say bioproduct stock (stem cells)
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    End of the Lie

    And that is the point.

    You wanted to know what was wrong with demanding proof of negative? Why it is important to have an affirmative assertion of personhood?

    You just answered your question.

    Again, this is dishonest. In the first place, those statements are scattered all over the thread.

    To skip out of order for a moment:

    It's an interesting point, especially coupled with your earlier lie that I haven't posted my position. Consider your example:

    "Here I'll do it again explicitily: a fetus becomes a baby at birth... how is that so hard?"

    Just for the sake of consistency, where is the why in that statement?

    Now, in the two simple statements I noted, the why is actually included:

    • As is well-known, in questions of pregnancy and termination, I assert a dry-foot policy; as long as an organism exists inside another person, it is that other person's jurisdiction.

    • Indeed, it's why I have a dry-foot policy; my resolution is to simply assert that what takes place inside a woman's body is her own business.​

    But setting aside your dishonesty, yes, one might suggest the question of why pushes beyond that. Why is what takes place inside a woman's body her own business?

    "Because there is another person involved."

    ―How is there another person involved?

    "The child is a person from conception (fertilization)."

    ―And how does that work? The way the laws are structured, personhood creates a bureaucratic and law enforcement nightmare.

    "No it doesn't."

    ―Then what does it do?

    "You need to prove that a fetus isn't a person."

    ―Well, given the historical, existential, ontological, and legal paradigms, fetal personhood is the extraordinary, new assertion.

    "A fetus is a person! You won't even say why it isn't!"​

    There comes a point where the routine seems so stupid it must be deliberate.

    As we begin the review:

    Topic Proposition: As is well-known, in questions of pregnancy and termination, I assert a dry-foot policy; as long as an organism exists inside another person, it is that other person's jurisdiction.

    #14: Indeed, it's why I have a dry-foot policy; my resolution is to simply assert that what takes place inside a woman's body is her own business.​

    After the early posts, the thread moved onto other aspects. There are, of course, reiterations of parts of that:

    #58: For me, it's a dry-foot policy: Growing from fertilized ovum into a functional human being capable of existing without the umbilical attachment.​

    Sure, the why is slightly more implied than the prior two statements, but it's still more substantial than your example.

    The point comes up in other ways, too:

    #126: I'll take what I can get, but since it's not ever going to be my body, I don't know how much say I should get, merely for being part of the society, in setting the standard. Hence, my dry-foot policy.

    ibid: I have a dry-foot policy because it's not me. The very least I can do, as an American, is trust my female neighbors to be able to make decisions for themselves.​

    I would note the following because it is an early version of the cycle you're trying to run us around here:

    #168: For instance, I have a dry-foot policy distinguishing the fetus in the womb from the person in the world. I have expressed this many times in abortion discussions at Sciforums. I have made that point in this thread, including my reasons why (1, 2, 3, 4). You might disagree, and, indeed, have expressed your puzzlement at the idea that there is a difference between existing inside another person's body and existing independently of that body.​

    And all of this takes place before you started your odd digression five hundred posts ago. Then again, these issues you claim absent from my posts were discussed even then:

    #463: That personhood is asserted by others, not the "person", without rational merit, and entirely for sentiment. Of course the fetuses get shafted. They exist entirely inside and are wholly dependent on a living, independent person.

    And that living, independent personhood is no more or less than what we recognize of any human being. It is already established, defined in its own existential context. The personhood asserted on behalf of fetuses extends that condition to something that exists in a different context.

    #475: The burden is on the extension of this condition called personhood. It is attempting to assign an ontological attribute to a different existential condition.

    #489: That's at the heart of this discussion; assigning a new context of personhood to the fetus would trump a woman's right to govern what takes place in her own body.

    ibid: True, but there is also the point that zygote personhood is a new phenomenon.

    #605: The difference between the Negro and the fetus as such is the observable independent physical reality; the black man lynched was generally not still attached to his mother by a biologically-generated feeding tube.

    #677: It's a bogus juxtaposition, beacuse your question ignores the laws pertaining to the disposition of the dead, and also the fact that a fetus is only a person according to an unsupported aesthetic appeal.

    ibid: As I have noted, there are existential, ontological, and medical differences between the fetus in utero and the person standing on their own two feet, especially as there's really no way I would fit back up in there even if I knew who she was.

    #840: I have reviewed my position regarding the historical, ontological, existential, and scientific considerations of why a fertilized egg isn't a person. This is the standing paradigm. Life at fertilization is a very recent innovation compared to the history of willfully terminating pregnancies. Even the theological justifications I have encountered explaining why this is a religious issue don't quite work; it's an ad hoc article of faith that is only true because the believer says it is true.

    ibid: It would be one thing if you would address the points already on the record, explain why they are insufficient, and then making your demand that the standing paradigm be viewed as what you say it is. Functionally, historically, statistically, and in any scientific way you can describe reality, the assertion of fertilization personhood has not been the working paradigm.

    #914: The problem is this: Compared to the historical and anthropological record, the Life at Conception Personhood argument is new, germinating over the last several decades. In the thousands of years of human society, LACP is a new assertion, and it has never endured any real scrutiny in the public discourse since its introduction to the abortion debate.

    ibid: In the end, it is a discussion that I have had many times before; sure, we get that one is not a bigot, it's just that one needs or will accept bigoted outcomes as right. In this case, the question of bigotry is complicated by the assertion of a second person, the organism inside the female person referred to as the "mother". But this assertion is, historically, ontologically, philosophically new. And the lack of an affirmative argument on its behalf leaves it nothing more than an article of faith.

    #931: Or, as I have noted, in history, philosophy, and medicine life at conception is the extraordinary assertion.​

    And what is it we get from you?

    "This explains nothing, how is it not possible to state when a fetus becomes a baby? I can, I have, but you refuse to, why?" (#937)

    And your example?

    "Here I'll do it again explicitily: a fetus becomes a baby at birth... how is that so hard?" (#939)

    And your complaint?

    "and I asked why!" (#954)

    Now, then:

    (1) You have made a false assertion of fact.

    (2) You have willfully extended this false assertion of fact by attempting to sleight your own criteria.

    (3) You have been caught in these acts.​

    Let me be clear, then: I will not continue to accommodate liars.

    When you are ready to be honest, I'm sure there is plenty of ground we can cover. But as long as you continue to lie, there's nothing left to talk about.

    But thank you for making the point about the fundamental dishonesty of the anti-abortion argument. That, much, at least, has some instructive value.
     
  19. Capracus Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,324
    So by your interpretation personhood is a matter of obstetric scheduling rather than fetal development. Sounds about as ethically bankrupt as LACP.

    What if the umbilical cord was reattached and the baby stuffed back into the womb, would it cease to be a person?
     
  20. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Because this is possible?

    No, really, is it?

    Your argument is as ridiculous as the one pro-lifer's often use when they ask what about the women who ask for an abortion while she is in the middle of labour and delivering the baby..

    Personhood in this context applies to when the foetus gains equal rights. If it has equal rights while in the womb, then the mother's rights over her own body cannot be maintained. In that regard, she can and will be arrested for anything she does that infringes on the rights of the foetus. This can stem from what she eats (foods like ham, sushi, soft cheeses, many herbs and spices) or drinks, what drugs she ingests, whether legal or illegal, whether she wears a seatbelt or not, how she sleeps or lies down (if she lies on her back, for instance, then it can injure or damage the foetus as it can restrict blood flow to the foetus), to how she travels. I mean the list could go on. In short, the dry foot policy that Tiassa advocates means that while it is inside the mother, her rights are paramount.
     
  21. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    No, no I did not because asking you to present your ethical standards has absolutely nothing to do with your argument about affirmative/negative assertions.. unless you don't have ethical standards and believe some kind of insane nihilistic solipsism that ethics are wrong because hey nothing can be proven and nothing really matters, therefore anyone that tells me I should have a consistent rational for what I think is right or wrong is a dick.

    Well that was a example, that I personally don't believe, but provided to get the 'ball moving' so to speak, what I do believe I have explained why.


    So can she sell fetus for money, to be mulched for science? can she intentionally make them deformed for I don't know shits and giggles, can she do ANYTHING she wants with the fetus? yes or no and why?

    Question, how fair is something there "own business", if I was to use my body to grow deadly ebola to infect the world, is it ok because it my body therefore my business? I think I would 'put my foot down' when what in her body is about ready to enter society and become part of my tax paying buisness, "Hey are you going to abort it, well then stop fucking drinking, thank you!"



    The argument has move a little beyond that, it about what rights we should give a fetus, you see your pro-choice, I'm pro-choice but what does that mean for the fetus, there is not simply people and non-people, but gradients between that are possible, so you can either give a fetus some rights or no rights what so ever, either way let use explore the ethical possibilities and see if you and I can live with them. If I was arguing to a pro-lifer I would still be stuck having to prove it not a person, what I'm arguing with you about is "well then what is it?, when does it become a person, what rights does it have and when?" you know specifics, because I assume you have complex ethics other then "Jesus loves the children!".

    yes yes your 'dirty foot' policy, now and again: WHY? why is that your dividing line? Does viability count as a "dirty foot", if it could live independently but is not birthed, can it still be aborted/killed?

    Oh yes I was wrong your totally answered my questions, I know now from your examples what rights a viable fetus has, even if the mother is on drugs, insane or a beating heart cadaver, when it has rights and why it has rights, how that for honesty?

    See Tiassa someone else is willing to explore ethics. Now because I used viability this problem does not occur, of course exactly when it becomes viable is now the problem, should every abortion consist of tenderly removing the fetus and seeing if it can breath on its own for a few minutes? I would guess an arbitrary date would need to be used for the point at which it becomes medically too expensive to be "viable".

    Technically it is possible, just ridiculous, just like legally punishing a pregnant women for what foods she eats or how she lies down, possible to do but ridiculous to do. Look if she has been willing to go through the first and second trimester and not abort it, I would think it start gaining rights then, like not to have its mother inhaling toxic fumes while making amphetamines. Alternatively we could make abortion mandatory for convicts, regardless of viability, save the state money of having to take care of these children, as well as good old fashion eugenics.​
     
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Don't Even Know What to Call This Fantasy

    Obstetric scheduling?

    Okay, whatever.

    To wit, a woman and her partner go to the doctor for a late-term checkup. The doctor decides that as the due date has passed, and all attempts to reposition the breech fetus have failed, a C-section is slated for ten o'clock the next morning. The woman is expected at the hospital no later than eight o'clock.

    At five o'clock the next morning, the fetus decides it's done hanging around; the child is delivered by C-section shortly after eight in the morning.

    Obstetric scheduling?

    Yeah, you know, because that's a lot more reliable an indicator than the existential difference between being dependently and biologically attached to another person or not.

    Very possibly. Then again, given the unreliability of obstetric scheduling, why would you even go there in the first place?

    No, that would be assault, sexual assault, and possibly even murder, depending on the outcome.

    I mean, really, think about the part you're skipping. Regardless of anyone else's assignment of personhood at any earlier point, the child outside the womb, removed from its maternal feeding tube is unquestionably a person.

    It is illegal to visit such extraneous surgery (reattachment) on a person, and also quite illegal to forcibly insert something into a woman's vagina. And, in entertaining this perverse fantasy of yours, we might note that even if it isn't forcible insertion into a woman's vagina, but consensual, it's still sexual abuse of a child.

    One would not think these extraordinary points. Nor would one presume it an extraordinary point to suggest that one is better off addressing the real assertion instead of revising it in order to assemble a straw man.

    To revisit a point:

    It's kind of like the rape fantasies spun by infinite protection advocates, or gay sex fantasies devised by paranoid homophobes. The seem to have a much sexier—albeit dirtier—idea of what sex is like among their neighbors than those of us who really don't give a damn how the neighbors fuck.

    If you revisit the annals of anti-abortion advocacy, you'll find all sorts of twisted inquiries. You know, what if a woman decides to have an abortion after the baby leaves her body but before the umbilical cord is cut in order to take revenge against a boyfriend she thinks cheated on her? That sort of thing. And it really does occur to one to wonder how another might come to that question.​

    To the other, I have to admit, your twisted inquiry sets the current gold standard.
     
  23. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Firstly, it's 'dry foot'. Not dirty foot.

    Secondly, when women have evolved to the point where they are capable of being pregnant for as many years as it takes for her child to be able to 'live independently' (ie work, cook and care for itself) and do so while remaining in her uterus, then we can look at your question.
     
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