igordesu Wrote:Personally, I think making a law allowing others to kill babies so much worse than actually killing one yourself because, I mean, let's be honest, mothers are always the best cooks.

That is soooo, not true. My moms cooking is always a little bland. You didn't hear that from me though.

I wonder, though, why do you think people are killing babies? I've yet to see a politician who advocates killing babies. If you're talking about abortions, the things people are separating from the female uterus are what we call feti. At least if you're going to slander a person, be real with the label. They are fœti killers.

Fœti killer doesn't have quite the propaganda-esque/emotionally manipulative tone, but at least it bases its name on fact.

kazelee Wrote:I wonder, though, why do you think people are killing babies?

This is what it all comes down to and why it is impossible take an extreme view. There is just no way to know at what point the fetus becomes we would define as a human being. Just like the God debate. It can't be proved one way or the other. There does need to be some consistency within religion though. One can not oppose abortion and be for capital punishment especially when so many on death row or already executed have been proved innocent by DNA tests.

Last time I checked, babies were cute. Foeti aren't.

Quote:There is just no way to know at what point the fetus becomes we would define as a human being.

Fetus - a developing human, after the embryonic stage and before childbirth.

Baby - An unborn child; a fetus.

HUH!? WHAT!? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

*opens foot inserts mouth* @_@ Yeah you read it right.

Silly humans and their all inclusive nomenclature.

Okay. Since I just effectively killed my own argument, and I really hate losing to myself, I toss ye this question.

If you got wind that some woman's unborn fetus was really the son of Satan coming fort to bring about the fall of mankind, would you abort it - with the woman's permission of course?

IMO (and this really is IMO, not anybody else's--like I'm seriously just some random kid saying this here), it doesn't matter whether you call it a human being, a baby, a fetus, or an alien. We are talking about living cells here. Living cells that will hopefully grow into a human being like you and me. To deny those cells that basic right (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?...) on the grounds of selfish reasons is to be grossly ignorant (and a murderer). That's the bigger issue here. Not whether or not it's "technically a human being."

On the capital punishment thing, I concede that, w/o religion, it would be very difficult to support/make a case for capital punishment. And actually, now that I think about it, those are my only reasons for supporting capital punishment.

kazelee Wrote:Last time I checked, babies were cute. Foeti aren't.

Someone hasn't seen enough babies

igordesu Wrote:IMO (and this really is IMO, not anybody else's--like I'm seriously just some random kid saying this here), it doesn't matter whether you call it a human being, a baby, a fetus, or an alien.

The name is very important... went it comes to politics that is... word are quite powerful, and baby killer has very nasty ring to it.

Quote:We are talking about living cells here. Living cells that will hopefully grow into a human being like you and me. To deny those cells that basic right (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?...) on the grounds of selfish reasons is to be grossly ignorant (and a murderer). That's the bigger issue here. Not whether or not it's "technically a human being."

Of course we should all hope that in every situation the choice be life. Life is not always the best option, though.

When we throw in this thing called emotion, things tend to get very complicated. Say a woman were raped, or had domineering parental figures, should she forcibly me made into a martyr for "life"?

I personally find excuses like, irresponsibility, too young, and not ready, to be disgusting. Sex has consequences we all know about. But only allowing abortion under special circumstances infringes on the right of the individual carrying the child, the individual then becomes a "victim" of law. Laws are meant to preserve order within a society as well as protect it. American laws, in particular, meant to protect the individual. Denying this right would be deliberately giving birth to chaos, thus defeating the purpose of law in the first place.

Forcing a woman to bear a child to term is something one would expect to see in a more communist, group centered, organization.

Quote:Someone hasn't seen enough babies

I considered this as a rebuttal, but I thought no one would have the stones to go there. Touche. How do I make the accents with Ubuntu again?

kazelee Wrote:I considered this as a rebuttal, but I thought no one would have the stones to go there. Touche. How do I make the accents with Ubuntu again?

The forum barfs on the accent anyways.

I thought igor was joking with his first post but it just got funny after that. He's a walking stereotype of a right winger. I thought ppl like him were just made up by left wingers for a strawman attack.

It's too bad Barack never actually killed babies, with a pitchfork. I might become a nationalized American just to vote for him.

igordesu Wrote:IMO (and this really is IMO, not anybody else's--like I'm seriously just some random kid saying this here), it doesn't matter whether you call it a human being, a baby, a fetus, or an alien. We are talking about living cells here. Living cells that will hopefully grow into a human being like you and me. To deny those cells that basic right (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?...) on the grounds of selfish reasons is to be grossly ignorant (and a murderer). That's the bigger issue here. Not whether or not it's "technically a human being."

On the capital punishment thing, I concede that, w/o religion, it would be very difficult to support/make a case for capital punishment. And actually, now that I think about it, those are my only reasons for supporting capital punishment.

Nah man, you've got it backwards. Babies are the selfish ones, not the people killing them. I mean, they contribute nothing to society, they can't hold a job, and they live by sucking on a literal teat. And all that is after they're born. They're even worse before, since they have the audacity to steal food from their own mothers. And these deadbeats think they have a right to life? Ridiculous. And besides, life is a privilege, not a right, which I know is true because the death penalty exists.

I believe the mother should be allowed to abort until the 21st semester, just in case.

This reminds me of http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=LES7nuTPVUU

I'm really glad Obama's going to quickly repeal the global gag rule: http://www.genderhealth.org/GlobalGagRule.php

Foetuses aren't babies, embryos aren't babies, fertilised eggs aren't babies, ova aren't babies, sperm aren't babies. Babies are babies.

igordesu Wrote:IMO (and this really is IMO, not anybody else's--like I'm seriously just some random kid saying this here), it doesn't matter whether you call it a human being, a baby, a fetus, or an alien. We are talking about living cells here. Living cells that will hopefully grow into a human being like you and me. To deny those cells that basic right (life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?...) on the grounds of selfish reasons is to be grossly ignorant (and a murderer). That's the bigger issue here. Not whether or not it's "technically a human being."
.

Couldn't the same thing be said about sperm or eggs?

alyks Wrote:I believe the mother should be allowed to abort until the 21st semester, just in case.

So sometime in 10th grade?

Wow, we actually succeeded in moving thread for once :O That makes the end of my post in the other thread a bit irrelevant, will focus here instead:

A baby is a baby. It is a human and has basic rights. Cells however, are not human. Those are cells. If I cut some of my skin off, it doesn't have any rights, it's just cells. A fetus at the early stages (where abort is performed) isn't human. It can't think, it can't feel. This isn't a debate, we know it doesn't have the brain power. It isn't concious. It's about as alive as a tree.

igordesu, have you ever stepped on an ant? Even by mistake? Then you killed something which was alive, something far worse than killing a fetus which is stull just a bunch of growing cells.

When people hear above argument, they usually fall back to something even dumber: Potential for life. A fetus has the POTENTIAL to become a baby, so it shouldn't be killed because this potential baby has rights. Really? REALLY? How about a sperm? It has the potential to become a baby. When you're having sex with a condom, you're stopping a potential baby from being born! You're KILLING a baby!

A fun twist of the above argument for Christians: Sex = Potential baby. That means, waiting until marriage to have sex is KILLING at least one baby each year! MURDER!

Overall, banning early abortion is just dumb.

cracky Wrote:Couldn't the same thing be said about sperm or eggs?

Didn't you know?

This is why every time you masturbate god kill a kitten.

kazelee Wrote:

cracky Wrote:Couldn't the same thing be said about sperm or eggs?

Didn't you know?

This is why every time you masturbate god kill a kitten.

Oh, my god. I've killed so many kittens! =|

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ROFL at tokyostyle's comment!

I have killed many kittens too... :p

in the perspective of buddhism, I believe that while abortion would be considered as a negative act, it does not harm the "soul" (or whatever it is that buddhism considers as the basic essence of the "self"), it will simply reincarnate in another body, or it might even reincarnate and the next child of the same family after they did the first abortion.

Ideally, every born baby should be accepted into the comunnity, even if their parents do not have the means to care for them. But in the light of reincarnation, the bodies or cells would not be considered as the real "self", and that "self" would never be harmed, it would simply find another route for reincarnation.

Of course, this whole thing is bordering on whatever beliefs we have. In the end, you can't find a scientific answer for when life begins. All we have are our beliefs. I don't believe people go to hell for having an abortion. And I don't believe that the "self" is a limited creature that would be impeded from its life purposes by the act of abortion... It would find inevitably a way to accomplish its objectives.

In the end, I don't condone abortion at this moment that I'm writing. But the reasons for accepting or not abortion will always be debatable. I reserve the right to change my opinion in the future, if my intuition tells me so.

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@bebio: I was actually curious about that and did a search before you posted. I found out, actually, that Buddhists believe the new being to have a soul from the moment of "conception". So in that view they do not support abortion.

Quoting the Dalai Lama (from a BBC article):

Dalai Lama, New York Times, 28/11/1993 Wrote:Of course, abortion, from a Buddhist viewpoint, is an act of killing and is negative, generally speaking. But it depends on the circumstances.
If the unborn child will be retarded or if the birth will create serious problems for the parent, these are cases where there can be an exception. I think abortion should be approved or disapproved according to each circumstance.

I guess that rules out my being a Buddhist then. Ratz!

Buddhism rejects the idea of an individual soul but doesn't consider it an overly important point. They usually refer to a "consciousness or mind" taking re-birth (re-incarnation limits one to only take re-birth in a flesh body and soul assumes there is some point at which I am separate from you). What "consciousness or mind" is or is not is to be examined through meditative contemplation. I agree with most everything beibo says as far as abortion doing little to harm that being. It mostly harms our own progress. Women who have abortions seem to often develop deep emotional scars. The Buddhist Lama that advises me is pro-choice as long as it is carefully thought out and not abused. One has to decide for themselves, as with all choices involving morality, what defines abusive.

Fabrice and bodhisatmaya, thanks for the corrections

On a side note, even as a man I had to make a decision on whether or not to abort the child I have in the Philippines. There were complications and the doctor advised abortion. The mother couldn't chose because going through with the birth would be very expensive and the child would have little chance of survival anyways. In the Philippines, hospital stays must be paid for ahead of time (there are pathetic excuses for free clinics though). If you are dying, they have no choice but to let you die outside the hospital doors. He lived and is perfectly healthy now at age 7. It cost me a fortune to keep him alive even in the Philippines. He was born one month premature and grew in an incubator . It was a morality play for me personally because that money would have otherwise been used to save dozens of other children in charities I ordinarily support in India. I chose the potential to save my one child over the lives of many others I do not know.

@Tobberoth: Well, an unfertilized egg or sperm all by itself really have no potential for becoming a human being. However, they do when they are together, and for that reason I do not support "killing" these cells. They have a chance for a future.

That's the reason that I don't even support abortion in "special situations." I think that's stupid. So what if it's going to be the baby of a rape or something. It's not the baby's fault. Why would you deny it the chance of a future based on something someone else did? And what if you want to have an abortion because the baby is going the be "retarded" (I don't mean that offensively)? I still don't support it. It's not up to you to determine whether or not it deems its existence worth living. What if the baby would eventually be able at some point in its life to decide that it would rather live its meager existence than not exist at all? You just don't know ahead of time whether or not it would or would be able to consider that.

Of course, all of that is merely my reasoning from a non-faith perspective. Many other reasons that I don't support abortion are really based in my Christian faith. The Bible talks in numerous places about how God "knows people" and was "crafting them" even from the womb.

Another interesting point. The reasons that people have abortions are often selfish. Example, people think they won't have a baby b/c they are using contraceptions or something, but then they get pregnant. So, they decide that they want to keep on having sex but not have to deal with a baby, and then they abort it. This is the same thing that people did thousands of years ago. In the middle east, people sacrificed their babies to the god, Molech, who was supposedly the god of pleasure. To me, that sounds like the same thing.

Intriguing. Tell me more about this "Molech". I think I might have just found religion.