10 FALLACIES IN THE ABORTION DEBATE

Conservative Commentary ^ | 8 November 2002 | Peter Cuthbertson

[RobbyS]

Faith degenerates into sentiment, and words become nothing more than images of wishes.

[T Lady]

Thanks SO very much for posting this website; I took the liberty of sending it out to fellow Christians and family members.

...Hopefully this will enable them to connect the dots between the Abortion Industry and the Democrat Party.

[rdb3]

Thank you for allowing your complicity to be shown. I appreciate it.

No mercy.
Coming soon: Tha SYNDICATE.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.

[Nephi]

You know, you've got to work on your communication skills.

We agree, but you've come across as though you're the only one who has ever thought about this issue.

[supercat]

2. 'Pro-choice' is a neutral position on abortion

It is my understanding that abortion mills, as a matter of course, perform a sonogram before doing an abortion. It is also my understanding that many of them will refuse to let a woman see the sonogram, even if she requests to.

To expose pro-abortion forces for what they are, how about passing a law that requires any abortion facilities to, on patient request, make any sonograms they take available/visible to the patient. Such a law could not reasonably be interpreted as interfering with any "choice" the woman might wish to make, since the woman would still have the option to go ahead with the procedure without seeing the sonogram. Nor could it be interpreted as imposing extra costs on the abortion mills, since they would not be doing any diagnostics other than what they already do.

Anyone who is truly "pro-choice" should support such a bill, since all it would do is give women another choice to make (whether or not to look at the sonogram). I suspect the "pro-choice" forces would strongly oppose such a bill, however, since women who see sonograms of their foetus tend to decide to keep it (and become pro-life in the process).

Anyone else like that idea?

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

Excellent idea, they want all the choices they can get.

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?

* In 1981 (April 23-24) a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings on the very question before us here: When does human life begin? Appearing to speak on behalf of the scientific community was a group of internationally-known geneticists and biologists who had the same story to tell, namely, that human life begins at conception - and they told their story with a profound absence of opposing testimony.

Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.

* "Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence."

* Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

* Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."

* Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, "I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty ... is not a human being."

* Dr. Richard V. Jaynes: "To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous."

* Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And on the Supreme Court ruling _Roe v. Wade_, "To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion."

* Professor Eugene Diamond: "...either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."

[Tomalak]

Bump!

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[mafree]

Good post.

[palmer]

The moment when the egg becomes fertilised is not in any sense arbitrary. It is the time when two separate human substances actually form a distinct, complete human life.

I don't think there's such a moment, only a continuum. To idealize one spot on the continuum and declare that conceptual thing as a complete human is indeed arbitrary.

[palmer]

Thank you for allowing your complicity to be shown.

Abortion is sad, even tragic. However the essence of conservatism is compassion for fellow humans. I cannot rationally include a single cell in that category. The cells you and I kill every day have the same qualities as the fertilized egg, and I don't feel any empathy for them.

On the other hand, I feel tremendous empathy for a tiny person, complete with grasping hands and brain able to sense pain. This is the innocent unborn child that I would like everyone to see before they consider an abortion.

But if I am forced to defend the religious definition that a single cell is a human being, I lose my ability to appeal to humanity. How can you love a cell? How can you empathize with a cell?

[Delta 21]

Your #69 and #70 contradict each other.

Of course there are defining moments. Every second of every day is a defining moment when ever a choice is made.

FREE WILL

Ask any woman who has lost a child due to miscarrage how much love is felt and then lost when that "one cell" (as you call it) is lost.

You cant have it both ways.

[MHGinTN]

The cells you and I kill every day have the same qualities as the fertilized egg Your lack of education on this subject is showing. The 'fertilized egg' is unique to a quantum leap level above the skin and other cells you and I shed every day. In fact, the 'fertilized egg' is a unique individual human life to a scientist, else why would tissue researchers be seeking to clone replicas of an individual in order to use newly derived clone cells for treating diseases?... It works like this: scientist know that to get duplicate cells of an individual human being, for perhaps parkinsons treatment, the egg to zygote to embryo to fetus process needs be followed, for the newly conceived life (the 'fertilized egg') is individual and self-replicating on an organismal scale, not merely an organ scale; scientists try to use one living cell from the donor to insert the nuclear material into a de-nucleated egg, to create a new individual life duplicate of the organism whose cell was taken from which the nuclear material was taken, and thus grow organs for harvesting by growing the organism to be a donor. This would be unnecessary if the cell of your inner mouth was equatable with the total organism that is you or the total organism that is that 'fertilized egg'.

[palmer]

Of course there are defining moments. Every second of every day is a defining moment when ever a choice is made.

There's no moment of choice either. A moment is simply the concept which is an imaginary point on a timeline. The thought process of making a choice contains an infinite number of moments as motives turn into actions. Ask any woman who has lost a child due to miscarrage how much love is felt and then lost when that "one cell" (as you call it) is lost.

I'm not an expert but I doubt many women feel much of anything when those cells die. One of my catholic friends had a miscarriage in which she suffered greatly. Her pain included physical pain and guilt. I wrote a note and expressed my sympathy. It wasn't a cell, she lost her baby. That's what made my sympathy sincere.

[Delta 21]

Your #74 won my argument for me. Thank You

[Publius6961]

Having lived through the whole abortion debate I think it can be summed up with one idea; all the rest is sophistry.

It is about redistribution of wealth and the agenda of the "Progressives" previously Communists and Socialists:

Establishing a new "Right" for a special group to be paid for by the American Taxpayer. Just another brick in the road towards Socialist paradise.

That it establishes another legal mugging is the main issue never discussed; Funding of abortions for everyone who requests it was always the goal.

[palmer]

scientists try to use one living cell from the donor to insert the nuclear material into a de-nucleated egg, to create a new individual life duplicate of the organism whose cell was taken from which the nuclear material was taken, and thus grow organs for harvesting by growing the organism to be a donor. This would be unnecessary if the cell of your inner mouth was equatable with the total organism that is you or the total organism that is that 'fertilized egg'.

Your description matches what I understood. I am not an expert, but I aware that this process can and will inevitably lead to the creation of living dead human beings. I can't believe anyone would think that any of this research is a good thing. If I abuse my liver and it dies, I certainly won't consider growing a human to harvest a new liver from it.

[MHGinTN]

... inevitably lead to the creation of living dead human beings. I can't quite get my mind around a living dead notion. Do you mean a clone would be souless? If that's what you mean, I can't see how someone could make such an assertion as fact rather than opinion. What cloning research will do is create then destroy perhaps thousands of human embryos in the process of getting just one living clone to birth. And cloning research is now aimed at 'therapeutic cloning' which won't allow the product of conceptions to reach birthing age but be harvested well before delivery date. With Dolly the sheep, hundreds of sheep embryos were created but didn't produce a healthy sheep, though many mutated sheep did result that were destroyed. I've often wondered if Roslyn Institute played with then buried those 'proto-dollies' in their yard. [Silly effort at a sick joke ...]

[palmer]

Your arguments and most others on this thread have refuted "fallacy" #3 in the original article. Religion would be the only reason anyone could equate compassion for humanity with compassion for fertilized eggs. Dragging that notion into politics will surely doom our party.

[MHGinTN]

You keep using the phrase 'fertilized egg'. Do you know when the 'fertilized egg' is no longer that and something else? Within an hour at most, minutes usually. The word 'egg' ceases to be applicable as soon as the genetic material of the two germ cells unites. That action occurs as much as seven to ten days before implantation of the newly conceived individual human life.