Posted on 06/06/2003 9:46:51 AM PDT by Luke Skyfreeper
Years go by, and the abortion struggle rages on.
I would like to suggest that the following doctrine is a basis for an uneasy resolution to the political conflict; one that may eventually come to be accepted by all.
Abortion should be legal, but only up to a certain date. We need to define, as best as we can, when we are dealing with a human being.
The current definition of the law afford NO recognition that a developing child is a human being until the moment that child leaves his or her mother's womb. Anyone who pays the faintest attention to what we know through medical science can readily recognize that, at full term, this is far, far too late.
If a developing child is old enough to survive outside of the womb, even with medical assistance, then it's a human being. Obviously.
If the developing child is old enough to feel pain, regardless of whether or not an anesthetic is administered, then it is developed enough to be a human being, and destroying the said developing child must be illegal.
Practically, this means that for humane reasons, all abortions after a certain date (somewhere between 8 and 24 weeks) should be made illegal. This is only humane, and even 8 weeks would allow more than a month for decision making and getting an abortion appointment (although I suspect that a medical consensus would put the development of pain later than that).
The vast majority of abortions already take place before 24 weeks now. However, it is currently legal to destroy developing children at any stage of development, as long as at least part of the child is still inside the mother's body.
I believe this is the basis of the solution to the abortion problem. Part B is that accurate information must be provided to women considering an abortion. Potential adverse effects must be covered, and other options, including adoption, must be adequately presented. A waiting period may also be appropriate.
None of these takes away choice. The choice is still there whether to have a baby or have an abortion.
One can therefore be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time.
I also argue for use of the term "developing child" (which is intuitive, completely accurate and fully descriptive) rather than use of the term "fetus."
Political wars are won and lost on the choice of words.
My definition of fundamentalism says I believe the Holy Bible says what it means, means what it says, and is entirely true. Any differences in our understanding reveal our limitations, not His. I accept the fact that He will reveal Himself through His Word to me only as I am willing and able to take it in. It is a process; He doesn't do it all at once (not even for the apostle Paul). If two of us would be, as you say, diametrically opposed in our interpretation of His Word (although I can't recall any 180-degree splits), one or both of us are wrong. It is absolutely impossible that any of us would have all the answers. His Word was written by God Himself, given to men through the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Holy Bible is the living Word; its meaning is revealed over time. (In contrast, the Constitution, written by man, cannot be a "living" document. Its meaning is lost, not revealed, as time passes. ;)
So, yes, my mind does change as my understanding grows.
I am also in my 40s, the husband of one wife. We have 2 boys. Our life is eerily similar to that of the Cleavers. :-)
That is the most reasonable statement you have made, in my opinion, throughout this discussion. It comes down to to the degradation of our culture into a cult of selfishness, however, that, which on the surface, appears to be self-serving is untimately self-destructive. Thankfully there are people of conscience who seek to reawaken the conscience of a nation. In a perfect world, abortion clinics would have never come into existence. The next best thing would be a revival of conscience on the part of the people that would would leave the hollow frames of the death markets standing only as a stain upon our history, monuments of shame in that we silenced the voices of generations of our own children. As a result, we will never know how great we might have been.
You were not aware of the other person, but by drinking and driving, you are taking the risk of hitting somebody without knowing it.
A test. You are a woman, and you are 10 days pregnant. Obviously, you aren't aware of this fact yet. You get drunk, you get in your car, plow into a tree, and are fine, but you miscarry.
Why would you not be charged for the same charge?
Every woman who abuses alcohol or drugs while pregnant before they know they are pregnant, could under a life begins at conception, and a 16 cell embryo is exactly given the same status as a delivered child type world, be guilty of manslaughter.
That for me is the rub. I really don't think that the conception people really believe often what they say they do.
The punishment is the rub. Anything one can do to a 12 year old that will create jail time, transfer that to a 16 cell embryo, and see if you genuinely believe that you, and the american people will want the punishment to be the same.
In a world where all abortions are banned, a 12 girl gets raped by her teacher, her parents find out, and pay for an illegal abortion within days of her missing her period. Her older brother drives her. A doctor and a nurse illegally do the procedure after hearing the details of the case.
In this world, the doctor, nurse are charged as murderers, the girl, her brother are charged as accessories to murder, her mother, and father are charged for contracting murder for hire, and the rapist does less time than the lot of them.
And often it is precisely because they have listened carefully and weighed other points of view that they have come to the conclusion that when it comes to some "choices" there is simply right and wrong. This is one such issue.
For you it may be a simple black and white thing. For me, I find that the more I think about it, the more I see that there are a continuum of choices and actions. Some actions are right, some are wrong, and some of the wrong ones are more wrong than others.
Some crimes are more deserving of punishment than others. The murder of Laci Peterson is far more heinous than somebody smoking a joint, or even stealing somebody's purse.
For example: A young woman has an early-term abortion, before the developing child has any capability of feeling pain or knowing what is going on.
Another young woman decides not to have an early-term abortion, because it's "wrong." The same young woman gives birth to a little girl who then has to live her young life being physically abused by the mother's drug-addict boyfriend, suffering for 2 years before the boyfriend finally murders the little girl.
Are both wrong? I would say that both are wrong. Is one more wrong than the other? Of that, personally, I have no doubt. I would far rather see the early term abortion than a young child be born into a situation where that child is going to be abused and killed, after suffering for a long period of time.
And of course there are other options, such as adoption. But foolish young people sometimes don't have the strength or the sense to take those options.
And most of the time, the people involved in such situations are foolish. If they weren't foolish, they generally wouldn't be in the situation in the first place.
Yes, sometimes considering all points of view produces a simple black-and-white clarity. But far more often, in my experience, it results in a more sharply-defined, but more complex point of view, if the consideration is honest: for example: killing somebody is wrong... except in self-defense... except that provoking somebody to the point of threatening your life, and then killing them is also wrong.
Unless you are looking at the issue solely from a religious standpoint, rational thinking minds would conclude that at 5-7 weeks, a fetus is not fully formed and is not a human life until at least 11-13 weeks.
I guess she was Pro-Life for that decision. However, she supports "a woman's right to choose", which makes her pro-abortion for others.
You and I seek to limit the "woman's right to choose", because choosing to kill is still murder. The difference between you and I seems to be that I favor limited choice for the first 7-12 weeks ONLY, depending on the scientific standard of when a baby is fully formed and their brain waves start to function. At that point, the "baby's right to choose" should be more important than the mother's.
Ever notice when someone wants a baby, the fetus is called a baby, but when the baby isn't wanted it is called a fetus?
Yes.
In my own life, I am 100% against abortion. I abhor it, and no doctor who's ever performed an abortion will come near my children.
However, as it relates to the law of the land, I am in favor of restricting "a woman's right to choose" down to the first 7-12 weeks, depending on scientific evidence as to when the baby can think for itself and is fully formed in the womb. In my mind, clearly before this point, a baby is not yet "alive".
Did you know that the ORGANISM must be already alive in order to build its own organs? The embryo is completely viable as an individual human ORGANISM in the environment in which it exists ... in vitro, it survives on the 'nutrient' provided; in utero it survives on the nutrients it can commandeer from the woman's body ... but it is the individual already existing ORGANISM who triggers the woman's body to provide life support in the 'water-world, it is the already alive individual ORGANISM who builds the organs for later survival when leaving the water-world to survive in the air-world.
Yes. No brain function, no life.
Is a brain-dead person on life-support with a beating heart or functional kidneys considered "alive"?
In a recent essay for First Things, Maureen L. Condic, PhD, Assistant professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, presents a convincing argument for meaning of the death protocol (used when organ harvesting is anticipated) to also be used when contemplating prenatal life. She has stated accurately that, “… the loss of integrated bodily function, not the loss of higher mental ability, is the defining legal characteristic of death.”
That is an accurate reading of the protocol but there is confusion by some regarding this protocol because it addresses ‘brain death’, yet it doesn’t refer to mere loss of thinking ability. It should not be assumed that ‘being alive’ is solely a function of higher brain functioning, or even dependent upon the organ called brain.
To paraphrase Dr. Condic’s assertion: ‘to be alive as an ORGANISM, the organism is functioning as an integrated whole, rather than life being defined solely from an organ (a form within the organism) that functions to make the whole organism work.’ The ‘one organ defines alive’ notion was the perspective years ago. People focused upon one organ, when the heart was the center of function, before organ harvesting became a reality; when the heart stopped beating, the person was thought to be dead, thought to be no longer an integrated whole organism. Today, doctors routinely stop and start the heart, keeping the patient viable as an integrated whole via artificial heart and lungs.
A person in an unrecoverable coma or vegetative state has no higher brain function, yet their body continues to function as an integrated whole. As Dr. Condic puts it, “Although such patients are clearly in a lamentable medical state, they are also clearly alive, [so] converting such patients into corpses requires some form of euthanasia. … Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole, not by mere presence of living human cells.”
Like freeper Luke Skyfreeper, it seems you've used some pretty fuzzy definitions. Think for itself? How do you define that, and how do you establish that? Surely at 7-12 weeks you can't administer an IQ test. You can't establish Apgar scores, at least not in any meaningful way that is accepted in the field. So what is it? And, more important, why should an individual's score on some kind of test be the determinor of personhood? Talk about a slippery slope! I mean, if we take that as an operable principle, almost anything goes. IQ score not up to par? Do them in! (The Nazis did just this with their "useless person" paradigm.) Didn't do very well on the SAT? Sorry, kid, you're outta here. Come in kinda low on the TOEFL? Bummer. But, sorry, the law's the law...(BANG!)
In my mind, clearly before this point, a baby is not yet "alive".
So what is it, then? Is it dead? Is it in kind of quasi-alive state of being that is new to science? I guess there are cases where science can't really define if something is "alive"; viruses, for example. There you go, ladies, at 7-12 weeks, you thought you were carrying a child, but all you had was a virus (sort of)...
Hey, believe it or not, I'm not trying to be flippant here. Maybe its more a case of being sardonic to illustrate the kinds of problems that come up when we try to dodge the real issue (how you define when a person is a person and what the basis is for that) and cover it up with word games and other assorted mental gymnastics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.