Posted on 01/12/2012 3:12:53 PM PST by rhema
In a recent article that has to be read to be believed, Shannon Dea, co-president of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region, responds to a call by a Canadian member of parliament to have a debate on the humanity of the unborn child, saying: “Medical science is irrelevant to the question of when a fetus becomes a human being — that matter is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical one.”
Dea might as well have said that medical science is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a pig is a pig, or an elephant is an elephant, or a tree is a tree, and that the question of whether a pig is really a pig is “a legal and philosophical” one. The fact is that the unborn child, whatever you might say about its right (or lack thereof) not to be ripped into pieces and vacuumed out of its own mother’s womb, is obviously a member of the human species - a living organism with a completely unique human genetic code - and it is obviously science that tell us this.
Any argument that it is the law or philosophy that informs us whether a fetus is human is simply laughable - it is neither the law nor philosophy that classify living organisms according to their proper genus and species based upon their characteristics and genetic makeup. That’s the job of science. Law and philosophy barely enter the equation. And if Dea doesn’t know that, then perhaps it’s time she takes a refresher course in grade 2 biology.
Notice that Dea’s argument isn’t the old cant of the pro-abortion movement, that the unborn child may be human (as science shows), but that it isn’t a “person” (which is a philosophical question) - she goes even further and states outright that even the humanity of the fetus is up for debate, because it’s a “legal and philosophical” question.
Sadly, I’m not surprised. Abortion supporters have long seemed to believe that there exists some magical force by which an unborn baby may suddenly become a baby, and then in a single instant become an amorphous “blob of tissue” again. They grant this power in particular to the mother of an unborn child: if a mother decides that she “wants” her baby, then…poof!...she has a baby. But if she suddenly decides that she doesn’t “want” the baby…poof!...it’s a blob of tissue, or the “products of conception” again.
It’s all part of the radical doctrine of absolute “self-determination,” the same doctrine that, for instance, allows a clearly male person to announce (and be taken seriously) that he is a “woman,” and vice versa. Advocates of this doctrine are willing even to throw the most basic laws of medical science under the bus if necessary. The only problem is that, when this doctrine is applied to abortion, you’re not giving someone the power to change their gender, you’re giving them the power to decide if someone is human or not…or, in other words, to decide if they should be allowed to live of not. In that case, what’s to stop us from extending this power to mothers beyond the womb, allowing them to decide if they “want” a baby even after birth? That, of course, is exactly the point that Princeton “ethicist” Peter Singer makes, when he argues that parents should have the right to euthanize their child for a certain (and necessarily arbitrary) time after birth.
The fact is, abortion supporters want abortion to be legal, because it’s absolutely necessary to the lifestyles they live and the worldview they espouse. To let go of the “right” to abortion would throw a major kink in their groove, and so they have to manufacture ways to justify the killing of the unborn child, even if science itself needs to be sacrificed on the altar of “choice.” You might remember this appalling video of Planned Parenthood reps telling college students that science is not “absolute truth,” comparing the mother of a child to a “host,” the unborn child to a “virus,” announcing that “science cannot be applied to my body,” and appearing to cast doubt on the very possibility of ever discovering for certain when the heart of an unborn child actually begins beating.
It was a pathetic performance, but all it goes to show is that abortion supporters are running scared, and getting ever more desperate. They know that science paints an utterly compelling picture of the humanity of the unborn child. And so they have to do what secularists never thought they would have to do - appeal to vague “philosophical” ideas to call into question the rock solid findings of natural science. But the truth will always be known in the end - and so we know that they’re fighting a losing battle.
Abortion is MURDER.
It is the cold-blooded, calculated butchery of a living human being. You need only to see some photos of aborted babies for confirmation. The waste bins in these abortion factories look like something out of your worst nightmare.
“...that matter is a legal and philosophical one,...”
So its up to the lawyers and philosophers to decide what is a human being?
Planned Parenthood: Seeing a Baby Before Abortion is Abhorrent
obviously, they have to support ignorance; they have to rely on people being ignorant in order to stay in business.
***** THE 6TH COMMANDMENT IS : “thou shalt not kill” = MURDER
KILL: (HEB - verb) -Ratsach “to kill, murder or slay... human being”
( Cain & Abel ) ( David & Uriah )
HUMANITIES OLDEST TEMPTATION —— TO BE LIKE GOD!
Lorne’s Razor: The more desperate someone is to hold onto a theory or belief, the more preposterous their explanations will become.
Let's ask the ignorant, duped, easily led so-and-sos why they don't believe in science.
And then ask them if they believe in evolution.
(And if they do, why they don't want to propagate their own genes, given that they are so obviously superior...)
Target-rich environment. Fire at will.
Cheers!
As you may know, dating from roughly the 2005-2006 time frame, and the "bug-zapper" thread, a lot of the pro-evolution people on FR (some atheists, some not; some scientists, some not) were up in arms for fear that the increasing Creationist/fundamentalist bent on FR would lead to the wholesale deliberate mischaracterization of FR and by extension, conservatives and the GOP, by liberals as "hostile to science" with consequent routings at the ballot box.
Here we have strident LIBERALS openly, explicitly rejecting science, in so many words, when it does not suit their agenda.
Do you think there will be a similar backlash (or that it is worthwhile to attempt to foment one) ?
Is it possible that this attitude of the LIBS on abortion obviates the very concerns of those who were worried about fundies, since it is clear that major segments of the left regard science as nothing more than an ideological tool at best, a hindrance at worst?
Sniff around on TOS and see if anything comes up.
Cheers!
This will eventually force Sctous to reaffirm whether it has the power to determine when life begins. Scotus has reversed course many times before.
Strictly speaking, life does not have a beginning. It is a property of the cells which are produced by the mother's and father's body. As long as those cells are maintained in favorable conditions, they will stay alive for a few hours, giving them time to encounter each other and fuse to become a new zygote, which is also alive. About half of the zygotes survive to implant and become embryos. When the property of life is lost, it does not return.
To use the presence of brain waves as a point after which abortion should not be allowed actually leaves open a window of a few weeks (4? I'm not sure) in which to abort.
““Medical science is irrelevant to the question of when a fetus becomes a human being “
Um, Shannon Dea, co-president of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region, didn’t you know that “fetus” is Latin for “little one”? Little one, what? Little HUMAN BEING, you idiot!!
Exactly- an embryo might not have detectable brain waves, but is nonetheless a human being with unique dna.
“Abortion supporters have long seemed to believe that there exists some magical force by which an unborn baby may suddenly become a baby, and then in a single instant become an amorphous “blob of tissue” again. They grant this power in particular to the mother of an unborn child: if a mother decides that she “wants” her baby, then…poof!...she has a baby. But if she suddenly decides that she doesn’t “want” the baby…poof!...it’s a blob of tissue, or the “products of conception” again.”
Best line in the essay. You are human only if you are wanted.
my point is there needs to be SOME point used to define life and death.
if it’s never defined, it’s never settled. maybe that’s what pols want...just another thing to fight over .
It's more specific: each human being between conception and birth is only treated as a human being worthy of legal protection if wanted by the mother.
Are you aware of when you were first a unique human being with a father and a mother?
At your conception.
Not before, not after.
Abortion, to its supporters, isn’t really about the law, or philosophy or medical science. It’s about sex, and the right of men and women to ‘hook up’ freely and without consequence to them.
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