Posted on 12/05/2001 12:07:29 PM PST by toenail
QUESTION: what is it that is being abruptly stopped or halted?
You are right to say;
At what point does it become a human being? That is the question.
Now the question has to be asked; when do you think a human life begins? And importantly, when do you think something that can be called a human being has its first day of its existence?
Not even Vilis Kruze?
Nope. I don't get out, much.
I am all in favor of vigorous and open debate ... I realize that the two sides share such different world views that I don't see how they will ever come together. Using terms that mean the same to both sides would be a great place to start, instaed of purposeful obfuscation of scientific facts This saddens me. Oh, it saddens me much more than it does you, because I believe the divisive argument is calculated to maintain an impass that will allow the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of thousnads of conscious little ones in their mother's wombs, for I've studied the notion of consciousness of a prenatal in depth and found that the state of awareness of the environment starts along about the beginninhg of the fourth month to fifth month from implantation in the uterus, so far too many abortions in my nation are actually an industry of serial killing, slaughtering children in whom the miraculous journey of consciousness ahs already begun. THAT IS wrong. Nothing can assage that truth. Are there real reasons to terminate a pregnancy when a second individual consciousness will be snuffed out?... ONLY where the actual survival of the mother is threatened should the pregnancy continue. You may feel that my argument is full of contradictions, Yes, you use the phrase 'fertilized egg', perhaps confusing the absolute scientific truth that an individual lifetime begins with the union of gametes and the moment after the union, there is no longer an egg but a zygote, an individual lifetime begun and at the initial stage called the zygote but I and many others disagree. 60 posted by siuslaw
When discussing things of a scientific nature, it is not fair dinkum to switch back and forth from asserting scientific facts then appealing to the very non-scientific phrases such as 'fertilized egg' ... not fair because you aren't dumb enough to not understand the truth you are obfuscating. If you want honest debate, honest discussion, an honest effort to uncover common ground, be honest.
Kept to that it is simple, and we would all have to agree on this start point if it wasn’t for the great complication: the place where life must develop…and the clashes that ensue. It is not a woman’s choice to be born a woman, but there is no changing that. But loosely said, any woman who maintains a functioning life support system in her body, and who’s body effectively produces the necessary ingredients for life indicates that she is willing or complicit to participate in providing life-support to a developing human.
Again, that is loosely put – there are issues I am omitting for brevity – but these issues provide exceptions, not rocks to break the facts over.
I like to make it as much about fact as possible – it is a fact based argument. I think it is important to be honest, because trying to state that life begins after conception gets very hairy. Trying to claim that an individual can privately preside over life can become a nightmare of establishing rights, and can start to an upset of the rights of everyone. I can’t approve of people who try to deny the facts in order to advance their belief that it is only a woman’s rights matter.
By the time I post this, you will probably have been flamed (if others are still paying attention to this thread) for suggesting that beliefs should provide the signposts for individuals to decide the issue of abortion. I’m sorry if you have been flamed, but we must acknowledge that beliefs do have their limits[post script: no flames - looks like it's just you and me here at the moment]. I noticed you were reluctant to form (or just state?) an opinion of your own. That seems a shame to me – I think that it is important for people to have a go at it, to try and take a standpoint, even if it is kept mostly private. I want to encourage you to browse through some of the threads around here and follow-up a few of the posted links you might find.
The way I see it, you’ve got to be honest about the facts, and then you have to develop a policy that tries to fit them into the real world (which requires very earnest, intellectually honest and carefully controlled debate). The way the debate in your country goes, that isn’t going to happen soon – I know you agree with that.
You talk about the images of abortions – this is an interesting issue. Some think that these images are a weapon, and uses them as such. I disagree with that notion, but I do see a purpose to the images. To me, many people have fallen out of sync with reality; a fault line runs between the way things are, and the way people would choose to see them. A vague illustration of this come from David Grossman in an analogy in his book On Killing. He talks of the extreme taboo of sex in Victorian society(on one side), and the pornography it generated(on the other side), and compares it to the rejection of acknowledging/discussing just violence/killing (as happens in warfare/policing) versus the gratuitous violence seen in film. Similar issues rise when we think of eating meat, and the repulsion that many feel when a slaughterhouse is seen (despite the fact humans are very highly capable of preparing an animal as food). In all these issues, concerning sex, and death humans must be expected to seek out a viewpoint (collective or personal) that has an element or degree of grey to it, despite the unpleasantries integral to these issues. Instead, these opposing positions arise, where the two tectonic absolutes grind against each other, two rocks that seek to maintain purity within themselves, but reject the responsibility to consider each other. The key is not that they grind down to equilibrium – that may not happen. The key is that eventually reality is faced up to, the knee-jerking ends, and the real debate begins. The concept of woman’s rights is not easily expressed in an image – but ‘pro-lifers’ need to wrap their heads around that too.
I'm in favor of a post-Roe Human Life Amendment. En route to that, there will need to be incremental measures put into place by law. A ban on partial-birth abortion, parental consent for minors, defunding Planned Parenthood, keeping the proposed "clinics" out of public schools...and V4F.
V4F is, in tandem with science and sympathy in favor of the prenatal baby. V4F offers a visible protagonist (the father), who is closely connected to the situation at hand.
It obliterates the "every child a wanted child" argument. Under V4F, every child is wanted, and supported, by the father.
It blows the myth of abortion being a "woman's issue". So long as pro-lifers are silent on V4F, abortion will be considered by the public-at-large a "woman's issue". As such, on some level, people will say, "Well, so long as abortions aren't forced..."
Many, many women subscribe to the NIMBY principle, saying that they would not personally have an abortion, but wouldn't stop others...V4F exposes the gyncentricity of this position.
I would pose to pro-lifers the following: the pro-life movement has failed in the courts and legislatures for 30 years. They have failed to endorse or even acknowledge the V4F position for 30 years. Society has paid the price for this twinned set of failures, and they are twinned. Abortion will never end, and a Human Life Amendment will never come about, until V4F is endorsed by the pro-life movement. It takes two to make a baby, but so long as pro-lifers are silent about one of those two, the father, it will appear that only one person was involved in conception, and that therefor the product of conception is the province of one person only. Keeping fathers/V4F out of the picture undermines the personhood of the prenatal baby for these reasons. It is not baby's rights vs. father's rights. It is that after 30 years of colossal failure by the pro-life movement's no-father approach, the baby's personhood needs to be endorsed by a visible, immediately involved protagonist: the father.
Pro-lifers refuse to engage this issue. All manner of red herrings are thrown out: well, the father was probably some irresponsible jerk, or somehow V4F would lead to C4M (when actually they are opposites), etc. etc.
Pro-lifers refuse to wake-up and endorse this issue.
And this is why we fail.
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