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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Last edited by kazelee (2009 January 22, 2:05 am)

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.

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

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

Wow, we actually succeeded in moving thread for once 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.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2009 January 22, 5:43 am)

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!

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.

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

Last edited by kazelee (2009 January 22, 12:02 pm)

Fabrice and bodhisatmaya, thanks for the corrections

Last edited by bebio (2009 January 22, 12:22 pm)

@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.