Fertilization-Assigned Personhood [FAP]

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, May 11, 2014.

  1. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    It's a pretty simple question, wouldn't you say?

    Who will save the mother?

    Thus far, the answer is the complaint about the denial of personhood to the foetus.

    How about this, how about pro-lifer's become concerned with saving lives.. This includes the mother's life.

    Because so far, all I see from the other side of the ravine is only talk and demands "the baby" be saved.

    Who will save the mother?

    See, if you are pro life, you should be very concerned that there are hundreds of hospitals in the US denying women health care because they are pregnant. Why do pro-lifer's not care about the mother's life? Why aren't pro-lifer's picketing outside hospitals that refuse to treat women with ectopic pregnancies or who are miscarrying and have gone septic because there is a foetal heartbeat? Why are these women's lives not worthy of pro-lifer's picketing and protesting about?

    You are pro-life - for the purpose of this scenario. A woman is desperately ill and there is a risk of death and the hospital refuses to treat her because she is pregnant. Why aren't pro lifer's picketing about that? Why don't they ever picket about the life of the mother?

    Let us look at Ireland as a prime example.

    Abortion was outlawed.

    A Hindu woman who has miscarried is rushed to hospital. The normal course of action here is to operate on her. This is basic and standard medical care for a woman who has miscarried. If the 'pregnancy' has not come out, then she will need surgery to clean out her uterus to prevent infection. So she gets to the hospital and she is sent home. A few hours later, she is rushed back, in agonizing pain as a miscarriage in the 2nd trimester often is.. And she and her husband are advised that they were losing their much wanted child.

    They do not operate. Instead, they send her home.

    Two days later, she returns to the hospital and requests a termination. It is a miscarriage, the miscarriage is not coming out.. It is a doomed pregnancy by all accounts. She asks for treatment 3 times and each time she is refused.

    Why is she refused? Because the foetus still had a faint heartbeat, treating her would mean they would be doing an abortion.

    Two days after that, with the remains of her now infected miscarriage still in her uterus, she collapsed. The day after that, the remains of the foetus and the infected tissue of the pregnancy was removed from her uterus after the doctor diagnosed her as having gone into septic shock due to the infection that had set in because they had refused to treat her when she had miscarried days earlier. She died of organ failure and cardiac arrest a few days later.

    Pro-choice protested about what happened to her.

    Pro-lifer's were nowhere to be seen.

    Why is that?

    Why was her life not worthy of protest by pro-lifer's?

    And why was a religious law being applied to her, when she did not even follow that religion? Why is religion even involved in medical care in this fashion?

    Were pro-choice people being extremists for protesting?

    So yeah, what about the mother?

    Who is going to save the mother?

    Would you have picketed and protested that this pregnant woman was refused treatment until she went septic and died? Would you have protested about her right to life? Or would you have perhaps posted a tacky pro-life save the baby and put it up for adoption cartoon?

    I dare you to answer that without referring once to the personhood of the foetus.
     
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  3. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    @ Bells,

    The mother's life should be saved, of course. But DF with no restrictions is what you are putting forth, which goes beyond just saving the mother's life.
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    I put that forward did I? That's interesting..

    What I put forward is that the mother is the one who determines what happens to her body. It is her body.

    I do not believe priests, bishops or people I do not even know, who are not my family or my doctors, should be inserting and asserting their rights in my uterus without my consent.

    You don't want to have an abortion? Great. I fully support you in that. You don't want to have one in the third trimester because you find it morally repugnant? Also great, I will protest for you to remain pregnant in the 3rd trimester and demand your rights over your pregnancy and your body remains intact. These are your choices that you make for yourself and you have every single right to make them.

    It does not mean that your choices for your body apply to me, for my body.

    You do not have consent to assert your personal beliefs over my body or the contents of my uterus.

    And I think that is what a lot of people seem to forget.

    You can choose to have a child, like I can choose to not have the child. Both of our choices are valid and both of them should be equally respected.
     
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  7. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    You think abortion some modern liberal idea never before practiced in history before modern medicine? Nothing can be further from the truth. Abortions and its methods have been recorded in Egypt since 1550 B.C.E.,
    China since 500 B.C.E.

    You might wonder how of course. It seems a concoction of natural herbs and probably cat whiskers were used to end early pregnancy. There was always an old crow in medieval times who knew something of these methods. A medieval herbal reference called De Viribus Herbarum referred to herbs to induce abortions in the 11th century. It seems herbs like Pennyroyal proved popular and effective though I'm sure it was bloody painful with all that awful cramping, but maybe they had herbs for the pain too. You see nothing artificial about abortion, its only the methods that have changed.

    I did some research and it seems there are a shit load of herbs and roots that in the right combination can cause an abortion. Very green indeed.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2014
  8. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    1,621
    So, no restrictions then? How is this different than what I said you were advocating?
     
  9. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    22,087
    Hello, McFly

    And there's my point.

    And again.

    And again.

    And again. The same quote even.

    And again: this is the assertion - if you really care about lives. I do.

    I am.

    Are you concatenating me with the above?

    Personhood of the fetus personhood of the fetus personhood of the fetus. Oh, noes! have I failed your challenge? Oh dear. See, I was going to say that the mother's life is of primary interest. Her welfare is principal. You know, like I have been doing, and like no person debating you at all has made a case against, ever, nor has made any common cause with the pro-lifers above. I would protest her treatment. And so would everyone else here.

    See, were I writing to any other poster, I have to believe that this point would have sunk in by now. Balerion, Quinn, me, Gremmie, and something like half a dozen others have written about the primacy of the woman's life in such matters. But you keep flying off the handle and dragging in 'examples' that don't even touch on the thresholds of contention, and then we have to keep rubbing your nose in the fact that the straw man you are desperately trying to set afire is not at home. When are you going to get this? The woman was in her second trimester, so it hasn't even begun to hit the threshold being discussed - after which point we would still prioritise the life of the woman!

    I mean, I understand, in a way. I get it: the demands of your dialectic force you to take no notice of my points and just keep on making the same assertions in contradiction of no argument that I am presenting in order to silence the argument you can't handle. I get it, I really do. It's just that we're rapidly getting into that SF regulations zone where you're not allowed to repeatedly talk around the new facts as if they were never given. So can I assume you have absorbed this fact now? What's it going to take, Bells? When's it going to happen?
     
  10. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    Depending on circumstance.
     
  11. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    What restrictions do you believe urgently need to be put in place?

    Third trimester abortions account for less than 1% of abortions. The reasons are because women are unable to access an abortion earlier (with over 90% of counties now refusing to cater to earlier abortions and with doctors being restricted in providing the service, some States only have 1-2 clinics or hospitals that provide the service, it's not hard to imagine this is hard to now obtain) in the first and second trimester, they have detected foetal abnormalities after the 27 weeks, they were raped or were victims of incest and in denial about what happened to them, they were young girls and young women, who were uneducated and did not understand, amongst the reasons.. Less than 1%.

    You wish to impose restrictions because less than 1% all abortions are in the third trimester and because you feel they need to have valid reasons. Their reasons are valid and all fit into the criteria you feel they should be following.

    So why do you bother or why would you bother imposing or demanding restrictions for this group?

    Are you afraid that without such restrictions, more women are going to wait to go through a painful process that takes days and is emotionally draining and physically awful for the fun of it?

    They aren't doing it now. So why do you think they need restrictions?

    The greater majority of abortions happen in the first trimester. A smaller figure for the second trimester and less than 1% for the third trimester. Do you think imposing such restrictions while denying women access to services earlier on in their pregnancy and even denying them access to contraception is going to mean that less women will 'wait' to undergo that awesome experience of 3-4 days of pain and horror?

    See, I don't get why people focus so hard on the 3rd trimester.

    Less than 1%.

    All the reasons are valid.

    Why do the less than 1% need those restrictions again?

    Do you feel the State has some tax dollars to burn? Shouldn't they be spending that time, effort and money in improving health care and education for poor women to provide them with more reproductive health care, or providing it for the children who are alive and need health care and education?
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    Q didn't say that. Nor have I never met anyone who wants restrictions on third trimester abortions because less than 1% all abortions are in the third trimester. Is this another Bells Strawman(tm)? If so, a poor effort. It would be more provocative if you twisted something she said into something similar but meaning the opposite.
     
  13. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Well you see, none of you have because all of you have been protesting about the 1% of abortions being in the 3rd trimester and carrying on and on about valid reasons and how of course these reasons would mean she can have one.. Umm the reasons are pretty much why some women have them in the 3rd trimester. So what's your point?

    Asserting your moral authority over women's wombs?

    Great.

    Leaving out the part that Balerion claimed that he did not care about her welfare because she is trying to "murder her child"..


    And you keep missing the point.

    When you impose restrictions, the examples I cite is what happens. I know it's hard to make that connection since those articles are dealing with the mother's personhood, but do try.

    I am curious about something..

    You keep saying how there needs to be restrictions and carrying on about women and abortions and all sorts of other crap frankly for the 1% of women who have late term abortions..

    Why do you think any of you get a say over my body or my rights if I am over 27 weeks pregnant?

    Who are you all to me again?

    What has clearly not sunk in to any of you is that none of you are connected to me or my uterus. I don't particularly care about what you think I should be doing with the contents of my uterus. I don't sleep with any of you, I am not related to any of you, none of you are my doctors or nurses.

    If I find that I need to have an abortion after 27 weeks, it isn't actually any of your business.

    The decision is between myself, the father of the baby and my doctor. None of your beliefs factor in to that decision.

    So why should I, as a woman who is pregnant (for argument's sake) comply with the controls and demands over my womb from complete strangers who have nothing to do with me or my baby, nor are they involved in my medical care?

    What rights do you, Balerion, Quinn, Gremmie have over my decisions over my body?

    Are you the morality brigade?

    Kitta is in the other thread waving his arms about asking if you all have a consensus.

    Okay?

    And?

    If I am 27 weeks pregnant, what does your consensus mean to me? Who are you all to me again? And why should your points matter to me and my womb?

    That is what you don't understand in this equation.

    The only equation you are a part of is the one you are directly involved in, with whatever woman you sleep with and get her pregnant, or if you are a woman, your partner and yourself.

    As a woman, you are not connected to me in any way, shape or form. You don't like abortions? Great. Don't get one and no one should ever force you or pressure you into getting one. Does not mean you have a say or an opinion about what other women do with their pregnancies. Correction, you can have whatever opinion you so choose. Does not mean the woman has to pay any attention to it.

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

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    37,882
    Observations, Perceptions, and General Thoughts on "Why Now?"

    That's exactly what's happening, but the courts are, so far, holding the line.

    The thing is that Roe affirmed a woman's access to abortion services as a constitutional right. The latest tactic is trying to (ahem!) "accidentally" ban abortion while making things "safer" for women seeking abortion. They're called TRAP laws.

    Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers is a simple concept: Find a way to "accidentally" regulate abortion services out of existence within a state.

    What the small-government Republicans in Kansas did was to go around to all the abortion clinics in the state, figure out how they worked, and then pass zoning regulations that none of them meet or can meet. For instance, this clinic can't stay open because it's janitorial closet is too small, and the law was written to specifically achieve that purpose.

    In some states, the anti-regulation politicians have decided to regulate clinics by demanding they have transfer agreements, or doctors have admitting priviliges to the nearest hospital. The problem is that abortion is generally too safe, and those doctors can't get admitting priviliges because they don't refer enough patients to the hospital. In North Carolina, they tried packaging shariabortion and aborticycle; that is, the TRAP laws were tacked into other bills, one outlawing the practice of shari'a in North Carolina, and the other intended to address some sort of motorcycle safety issue. In Ohio, they passed the TRAP laws in the state budget, and while the governor could have struck those with his line-item veto, John Kasich chose not to. Here's the morbid thing about the Ohio abortibudget: It requires abortion service providers to get transfer agreements with local hospitals, while also forbidding any hospital in the state from entering into such an agreement.

    Still, though, why now? My personal outlook is that a confluence of factors are pushing social conservatives to the edge of their capabilities. This has been happening for a while, and it basically comes down to the people obsessed with who has sex with whom for what reasons and all of that sort of stuff are (A) in too deep, such that the slow return of the repressed is revealing their fears to be ego defense projections, and, (B) the election of a black man to the White House.

    The thing about (B) is that it's not always the straightforward kind of racism that drives the George Zimmermans and Michael Dunns of Florida to look for a black kid to kill. But notice how Obama's election has polarized society; the conservative backlash has been to throw every damn issue under the sun at him, and to make a few up just to be on the safe side.

    Social conservatives have been losing their culture wars, now, for a while. The thirty-some year lack of substantial progress against Roe, an increased focus on the actual physical dangers religious authorities present to women and children, and the increasing recognition that they were about to lose a fight they went out of their way to pick with gay people, among other factors, is leading social conservatives toward panic. And some—many—of them are obviously panicking.

    Somewhere in their minds, these people understand the logic and basic perspectives by which they are wrong. And the more the slow return of the repressed—

    Because of the basically unsatisfactory nature of the neurotic compromise, tension between the repressed and repressing factors persists and produces a constant series of new symptom-formations. And the series of symptom-formations is not a shapeless series of mere changes; it exhibits a regressive pattern, which Freud calls the slow return of the repressed, "It is a law of neurotic diseases that these obsessive acts serve the impulse more and more and come nearer and nearer the original and forbidden act."

    (Brown)

    —draws the neurotic act closer to the repressed act or idea, the more apparent it becomes not only that they are wrong, but also some suggestion of how they are wrong emerges.

    And that's the reason they're panicking. They're losing because more and more people can see through the charade, and those losses increase the neurotic pressure driving the "obsessive acts" that "serve the impulse", thus compelling escalations of those obsessions that better serve the impulses, look more like the "original and forbidden act", and thereby making it more and more apparent to more and more people what is actually going on. Even people who cannot use a rudimentary psychological vocabulary like I do can perceive that something is amiss.

    Preachers who fall from grace, anti-abortion advocates who have abortions, homophobes who argue the dangers of gay people to children ignoring the plague of youth pastors heterosexually molesting the kids in their care, sex scandals among puritanistic politicians, and so on. One need not be a professionally accredited psychotherapist to recognize that something is amiss.

    While racism, for instance, suffered a terrible blow at the hands of American voters, Barack Obama's election and re-election also signify a more general transformation of American political power; and this has the traditionally advantaged chewing their nails and gnashing their teeth and losing sleep.

    And even the economic troubles that have been such a major blow to the fiscal conservatives who otherwise wouldn't give a damn about the culture wars except that their constituents are starting to panic. What this means to the social conservatives is that their traditional political allies are currently undergoing an organized withdrawal in order to re-establish their line. And while the fiscal conservatives will certainly re-establish well enough, this is a period in which they are exceptionally vulnerable; if they get hid by a strong, organized, well-timed and -placed flanking maneuver on their left, they might actually break. That the left can't pull that maneuver at present for lack of tactical outlook and organization doesn't offer much comfort.

    The social conservatives can see that they're losing, and the player who is supposed to have their six is in a vulnerable, transitional phase. This only turns up the heat they're perceiving.

    To the one, it's true that they shouldn't be panicking yet. To the other, if they're going to panic, these are the signs of an Apocalypse for their traditional privilege under the law.

    Which brings us back to abortion specifically. FAP advocates are losing their traditional authority and privilege; they've backed themselves into a corner where they simply cannot answer the outstanding policy question without tipping their hand entirely and showing the desperation of their bluff.

    It's so bad that one of the reasons Mississippi's TRAP laws were called off in the courts—they would have, anyway, but the Bryant administration made certain that would happen—is because the Republicans, including the Lieutenant Governor and the Governor himself, dispensed with the talk about patient safety and literally crowed to the public that the law they just passed would end abortion in Mississippi.

    There is a tactical reason to pull that stunt, but conservatives in the Magnolia State don't seem to be following up, suggesting that it wasn't a tactical maneuver but, rather, genuinely idiotic braggadocio.

    They're feeling heat on all sides. Some of them are definitely panicking.

    And as near as I can tell, that would be the reason for this ejaculation of crazy laws and ideas.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Brown, Norman O. Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1959.
     
  15. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    I'm sorry, are you claiming that she is not saying that there needs to be restrictions in place in the 3rd trimester access to abortions in the other thread?

    What restrictions is she talking about then?

    Driving license restrictions?

    What?

    If she is saying there does not need to be any imposition of restrictions and that abortions should be available to the woman as required, then great.

    She has openly said there needs to be restricted and limitations in the 3rd trimester. She also said that women who have illegal abortions with such limitations in place, or who obtain an abortion and who do not fit into the exemption criteria when there are such limitations can simply be prosecuted.

    So yeah, what is she talking about then?

    I said to her, why even need restrictions when it's for less than 1% of abortions. Why do people keep going on and on about restrictions and limitations when it is just for less than 1% of all abortions. Why are people so focused on that third trimester over all, when the figures for them are so so low?
     
  16. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,879
    @Tiassa

    But doesn't the push against abortion rights begin before Obama's term? I do see that there are more aggressive legislative push back against abortion during his presidency. Do you think it has anything to do with the ultra conservatives hijacking the Republican brand? Meaning that now you have more religious anti-government extremists running under the Republican banner? I mean even Reagan allowed abortion in California and didn't challenge abortion during his presidency even if he was ideologically pro life.
     
  17. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    22,087
    I'm not sure now. I'm too fascinated by trying to figure out what the hell the above is supposed to mean.

    Oh, right - yeah, the first sentence is bullshit, and it makes you a liar yet again. I think my patience is gone.

    And there's the social panic again.

    First off, I rather doubt that, because a) the source that's claiming it (reputation matters, you know) and b) because I just doubt that of Balerion. And of course, Balerion is one person. Even if he said exactly that - and that's very dubious - that would be one of 'us'. You're willing to let your slander stand as it applies to the others. Nice.

    I'm stuck with Tiassa's Dilemma here again: do I believe that you really don't realise that the examples you cite don't have anything to do with the deadline I'm proposing, based off an actually objective analysis, and which is even more liberal than the present thresholds, or instead should I believe that you just ignored it? Do you know what an objective comparison is? What happens when you have no restrictions at all? Have you considered any of that? Or would that be too threatening to your political synthesis?

    You noticed! :clap: Very good, Bells.

    Because you're carrying a fetus in you that's viable and may be expressing elements of cognition or sentience; which is to say 'personhood'. (Op! There's that naughty word again.) Who the fuck are you to it?

    So, by argument of relationship, you should be allowed to terminate a late fetus whenever you want and for any reason you want. That's such a strange point to make. So, we need control over elements of society, and economy, but not your uterus and certainly not for the welfare of the viable organism inside it. Why don't you just charge it with trespassing instead? Or you could fire some shots at it, a la "Stand your Ground". You could call it "Stand your Womb".

    As for all this crap: Sorry, you can't just affirm your way out of the argument on the very grounds of discussion. Comments flushed. (Pardon the pun.)
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    This and That

    It's a means of changing the subject.

    Think about it, no PIU advocate wants to actually come right out and say that the way to balance a conflict of equal rights is to rescind the pregnant woman's equal entitlement to human rights.

    And with FAP bills and ballot measures popping up all over the United States—and these bills are invoking the "equal protection" of the zygote—the question is brought into sharp relief.

    And for all the complaint about dry-foot, here's the thing: There is a way around it, and that is the point.

    However, that way around it would be to make a rational argument justifying the personhood of a zygote and answering the conflict of assertions of equal rights that give one "person" precedent and authority over another person's very body.

    And notice what happens. Allegedly rational discourse must invoke abstract moral authority? Viability magically resolves the conflict of rights? Well, it's true, that particular argument didn't assert magic specifically, but it's still unclear what happens at viability to change the fact of this ontologically extraordinary, newly-categorized "person" exists inside another person.

    The reason PIU advocates want to focus on the third trimester is that they can keep making the appeals to emotion derived from misrepresentation, such as the case our neighbor Geoff has been pushing. So he's morally outraged. So effing what? I mean, if he had something rational to offer, that would be a starting point.

    No matter how monstrous or evil or outrageous our neighbor finds the dry-foot assertion, it is a logical, rational, observable threshold. The thing is that any earlier threshold for application of personhood in the question of abortion invokes this question of the competing rights of two "people" occuring within the body of one person. And what does he have for a rational response? As it turns out, nothing.

    As it is, he's down to magic (just don't call it "magic"), just like Balerion is down to God (just don't call it "God").

    In the meantime, some will certainly attempt to distract attention from what is actually happening "on the ground" in order to argue about abstract lofty morals while refusing to make any sort of rational and objective case in support.

    And, you know, moral outrage is easy and attractive; look at the effect it has ....

    • • •​

    Well, that's in no small part because you're letting Geoff define the issue according to his aesthetics.

    There is a long saying in the abortion rights community: A woman's body, a woman's business.

    The anti-abortion argument has tried to undermine this through appeals to aesthetics and presupposed morality.

    This has eventually led to "personhood" arguments, proposed laws that would make even an unimplanted zygote a "person" under law.

    In the United States, this "person" is now entitled to equal protecion under the law. It is a straightforward declaration of the supreme law of the land.

    At the time that a human organism in the womb becomes a "person", it is entitled to every right and protection that anyone else is.

    I would ask you, please, to consider the implications.

    And then, please consider how you will enforce the equal protection of the rights of that "person" inside another person.

    This is the context Geoff consistently ignores, and it would seem you have taken the bait:

    Dry-foot describes a point at which the question of one "person" asserting rights inside and over another person's body objectively ceases to exist, as the one "person" is now unquestionably a person, and, furthermore, no longer exists inside another person.

    To the one, dry-foot has long been an implication of "her body, her business". But that implication has pretty much remained abstract, as the abortion access movement has been working to preserve the curtailment of a woman's authority over her body allowed by Roe v. Wade against those who would extend that curtailment to the moment of fertilization.

    And the anti-abortion movement has been putting up specific FAP bills with equal protection language in them. The question I am asking must eventually find resolution.

    So think about this: Pass SC H.3323, the "Personhood Act of South Carolina". Now, when the ultimate stake comes to a head in court, this is how the equal protection question will resolve: When a conflict occurs in which one person must assert equal protection of rights inside another person, precedent must go to the person who is the host of the other.

    And if anti-abortion advocates want to change that balance, they're going to have to address this question.

    Dry-foot is an argumentative outcome. Even FAP leads straight to this one observable, objective threshold, and if PIU advocates cannot resolve this question, these anti-abortion laws are going to hurt a whole lot of women while accomplishing exactly nothing on the list of ostensible reasons for the anti-abortion movement.

    If PIU advocates do not resolve this conflict, the zygote will lose.

    This is a real issue occurring in a real society. What roles do magic and abstract moral authority have in the discussion?

    It is an objective question observable in a real and functioning society; the what-if isn't what if they try to pass such a law, but what happens if they pass one of these laws that they have already proposed.

    And screaming about the perceived moral outrage of the dry-foot outcome does nothing to resolve the question to which it is applied.

    Is there a way to take part in our neighbors' attempted sleight of rhetoric without advocating its fundamental, working misogyny? No, not really.

    But if one finds the dry-foot problem morally problematic, there ought to be some objective argument, somewhere, that will address the conflict of asserted equal rights and resolve the question without wholly omitting the fact that a women are people.

    And, historically, the question of whether women are people is one we have encountered before in our society. Its legacy is called the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and addresses an issue generally referred to as women's suffrage. You see, the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection of all people under a state's jurisdiction, was insufficient to establish the right of a woman to vote; she was excluded from the equal protection of all people.

    If our society fails this question again, well, I suppose it wouldn't be unexpected. I have great faith in the idea of "America", but considerably less in my fellow Americans. I have great faith in the human species, but considerably less in people.

    We have the faculties to get through such challenges as these issues present, but at what point do we actually use them?

    Magical fantasy and abstract higher authority are not the bases for any sort of rational argument. Yet there are many who would agree with the preceding sentence who would also, in this issue, fall back to exactly that.

    Is that the problem? Is the problem that there is no objective, rational resolution to the question as to satisfy people's aesthetics? Is that the reason advocates won't even try to resolve the question?

    And that's where you see them being shut down. Are you afraid of being similarly rejected? Well, I suppose the question becomes whether or not you intend to argue for the curtailment of women's human rights in favor of an ontological innovation designed specifically to satisfy neurotic aesthetics. In other words, do you intend to argue for such curtailment without addressing the fundamental question?

    Therein lies the challenge.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Constitution of the United States of America. 1992. Law.Cornell.edu. May 12, 2014. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution
     
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    There's a perfectly logical point to declare a fetus to be a person. It's called BIRTH! What in the holy fuck is WRONG with you people????? You take something so simple, so obvious, so natural, so traditional, and you turn it into a TV game show! "Uh, I'll take 48 hours after the first feeble evidence of functionality of the adrenal system for $500, Alex."

    Uh, no. The Religious Redneck Retards think that they are a majority, but they're just a pathetic special-interest group enjoying their Fifteen Minutes of Fame. Most women are pro-abortion and a large percentage of men are too. The anti-abortion crowd is definitely a minority.

    Surely you've noticed that the anti-abortion movement is populated primarily by men. And surely you've noticed that most men don't really care about women except as sex objects.

    After all, the primary driving force behind the anti-abortion movement is the Catholic Church, and they don't even allow women into their power structure!

    I guess it's up to us atheists.

    This is a Catholic crusade and Catholics don't believe that women have rights. Next question?

    Not to mention, what happens to our language and common sense if we start calling a blob of cells that can only survive in a specialized environment a person?

    And people get on my case for calling all Bible-thumping conservatives "Religious Redneck Retards." This fellow has turned generalization into a science!

    You're not going to get an answer. Haven't you figured out that these people don't give a flying fuck about the mother? They're all misogynists--even the women among them!

    But there are other believers in antiscientific supernatural bullshit who are way ahead of you. They want to call the fetus a "person" at conception.

    I agree. And as I said earlier, that "certain point" is called BIRTH.

    Why do you think that such a middle ground is needed? Have you made a powerful argument that I missed? Or are you, too, caving into the Catholics?

    They've done such a fabulous job of protecting human rights over the centuries, well sure, they're the obvious candidates to do it now. They murdered millions of already-born adults in the New World simply because they practiced unfamiliar religions. These are the people who are qualified to determine which individuals must be saved at any cost (fetuses), while other individuals will be sacrificed (mothers) for the cause???

    Yeah right. Don't you folks yet understand why we don't merely disapprove of the anti-abortion crowd? We HATE THEM because of their attitude toward our WOMEN.

    My parrot clearly displays a high degree of cognition and sentience. Higher than the average Religious Redneck Retard. Your argument is pure bullshit.
     
  20. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    it's funny Fraggle... you keep claiming those of us who think a fetus needs to be given some consideration are evil and that we "hate women"... and yet, you are being just as hateful towards the developing child... it's emotive arguments like this that prevent any kind of headway or compromise being made.

    I have to wonder... decades ago it was slavery and women's suffrage... today it is homosexuality and abortion... what are we going to be fighting about decades from now... and will our children look back at this generation, smack their foreheads, and go "What the hell was wrong with them", the way we do about the problems of the last generation...
     
  21. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,425
    Food and water.
     
  22. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,879
    lol!! That was too funny.
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    It's not a "child" until it is BORN! You're playing games with the language!

    Do you really think that the Linguistics Moderator, of all the people here, is going to fall for that bullshit?

    You're doing the same thing that the Chinese, the Russians before them, the Germans before them, and probably dozens of other tyrannical governments did before them. You can't find a way to make a convincing point, so you just start redefining words in hopes of confusing us into believing that you're right.
     

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