mugen
What the fark, you d-wad. There's a difference between a guy jacking off and actually having a baby with a wife/gf. The guy's partner left him out of a major decision that affected him deeply and all you can do is put out this shiat.

And if people think the Bible's full of contradictions, take a look at the law for some really twisted thinking. After all, Scott Peterson WAS charged with double homicide, even though Connor was still in utero at the time. In fact, entire sets of laws (the Unborn Victims of Violence Act being most notable) exist to protect fetuses against harm not deliberately inflicted on them by their mothers and trained professionals.

Yea..... well....
that law was created recently and clearly for no reason other than to get a foothold in to make abortion illegal. Law is the work of man, not God.

fubuvsfitch said,

"Random Reality Check
This is from the big dic:
abortion Termination of pregnancy and expulsion of an embryo or of a fetus that is incapable of survival.
Any of various procedures that result in such termination and expulsion. Also called induced abortion.
The premature expulsion of a nonviable fetus from the uterus; a miscarriage.

Nothing mentioned bout the mom having to perform it willingly for a fetus to be aborted. So ya, smart guy, seems like I hit the nail right on the head."

If you can't distinguish between the murder of a mother along with the further killing of the unborn baby and an abortion I doubt we have anything to discuss, smart guy.

I can't wait for you to explain how this can be labeled - in any way, shape or form - an abortion.

You know, you are the one that decided to post in your earlier (2005-11-23 04:45:59 AM) posts that you were "just smart" but based on how this discussion is going I would suspect you see yourself as being "just right" instead.

I will willingly concede that I am sometimes/oftentimes wrong (hell, I'm married, I am constantly reminded of that fact) and when I realize that I have made a mistake I usually try to offer a heartfelt apology. This is what I consider the adult thing to do. Please feel free to take the next exchange and show us all how "just smart" you really are.

Like any medical procedure, abortion is gruesome and doesn't need to be shown to the world, however the point these people are trying to make is that if you consider a fetus to be a human being, tearing off limbs and sucking out brains is savage. I don't mean to be graphic, but that's where these people are coming from.
/pro-life
//still think these people are farked up

mugen made me jump back in. conception is the point at which the new life is not the man or the woman's matter entirely. it is the new life's matter. man and woman gave up a cell of themselves, alone incapable of living, to create new life. there is a difference between wanking it and an impregnated egg. You wanker. ;) just playin man. I understand your point though, either way it is non sentient cells, but the fact is Knight created life with someone and it was taken away without his knowledge or input, and that sucks balls.

AFA "thou shalt not kill", I've been told the original Aramaic is "thou shalt not MURDER"; quite different, obviously, and needing no asterisk for killing soldiers in war, judicial executions, or legal abortions.

Pro-choice, not religious, and not fluent in Aramaic, personally.

PunGent
Hey genius, hate to break it to you, but the OT was written in Hebrew then translated to Greek and Aramaic

dude, i was just saying that any time a fetus is killed it is aborted. check the definition. just bc the incidents i mentioned are not of the mommy killing the kid doesnt mean fetuses were not aborted. those are mentions of abortion. what we have hear is a misunderstanding of the term abortion. Wittgenstein's language game is making us enemys. Sorry if I was rude with the smart guy thing. Those quotes are abortions, just not mommy medical "induced abortion", the kind the people in the article are protesting.

shrapnil77

What good are laypersons' interpretations of the concept? They are not. The very reason legal doctrines evolve to such prescriptive, complex levels is due to the complexities of factual situations to which they are applied, and attempts to achieve 'justice', whatever that may be. The factual situations necessitate ever increasing exceptions or qualifications to what should, in the interests of 'justice', amount to murder.

The layperson concept makes no such attempts. It is entirely undisciplined nonsense without any intellectual rigour, and in its application it would no doubt produce a multitude of inconsistencies and absurd results.

The legal definition represents the distillation of hundreds of years' concerted, intellectually rigorous efforts to refine the concept into something usable which nevertheless reflects community values and so forth. Joe Bloggs', or your local dipshiat pastor's conceptualisation of murder is damn near worthless in comparison.

In any case, the legal definition of murder is the only definition which attracts any sort of consequences or sanctions. Murder in a moral sense is all well and good for pious or philosophical discussion, but morality condemnation alone is insufficient to deter or punish murderers, rendering the moral conceptualisation completely impotent.

You're a Mean Drunk R2D2

*shrug*

A little flaming on an internet forum is a far less onerous experience than living in a society where religious morality (except where they play their games of 'disregard the inescapable literal meaning because even by that expected of the religious it makes us look like jackasses') is imposed by law through the actions of people like him.

and we can discuss what "women with child were ripped open" means, but to me that means baby and mommy death. what does that mean to you, honestly asking, not flaming. if the baby is removed early and left to die, the pregnacy is aborted.

neocortex

Don't simply tell me that there exists a difference; specify the exact nature of the supposed difference and provide justification for regarding it as such.

fubuvfitch
Sorry, military talk. NCOIC=Non-Comissioned Officer In Charge, or the person you're directly answerable to on the enlisted side. (Anything) restriction is being forbidden from doing that specific thing- for example, whenever they put me on "comment restriction" they're telling me to shut the fark up.

mugen (again):
Actually, if I remember the Bible correctly, the prohibition was on marrying outside the FAITH as opposed to the race. Jews could marry gentiles, just so long as those gentiles first became Jews. In fact, specific biblical protections are extended to gentile women who were taken as slaves and later knocked up by their owners.

However, I do not have a copy on me, I'm doing this from memory, and I really don't care about the Bible per se, except historically.

I've never held much stock with goofy religions; look what happened to the Mayans. One of the reasons I'm such a big Ghengis fan is the Mongols' utilitarian views on religions (most steppe tribes accepted Christianity over Islam simply because they couldn't work with the dietary restrictions.) That being said, I'm not talking about the "storm the city of the enemy and exterminate them root and branch" thing that crops up every so often in wars, religious or no. When that stuff happens, it always gets messy. If they got to spend one-on-one time with a captured pregnant Philistine woman whose death would not have terrible political significance, I don't think they'd terminate the fetus and kill her just because God wasn't down with the Philistines. Despite the whole war thing, there's nothing to be gained by it.
::Waves flags for utilitarianism::

Taleya, I just meant that when the sperm and egg that made you it was no longer JUST the man and woman's matter/property, it became another life's matter/property as well. You are composed of matter arent you? you are your property, correct? ;)

mugen.
Regardless it's a poor tactic. It pisses people off and makes them want to oppose you even more just because they think you're an asshole, regardless of whatever logic you might have.

Reality, it is possible for one action to have more than one consequence, IMO, the actions i mention result in murder of the mom and abortion of the fetus.

mugen
I suppose I'd have to agree with fubu that conception is the point at which the new life is not the man or the woman's matter entirely. Once they combine, they form a new human life that is separate from the parents. Just as you and I consider ourselves to be individuals indepedent from the ones that conceived us, a fetus has the same right to life that we do. Perhaps our difference opinion lies in the question of when the fetus becomes human and gains protection under the law

Hmm, serial killers with death tolls in the trillions.

...Well see the rest of you farkers in wanker hell. Where the kittens get their revenge.

PunGent said,

"AFA "thou shalt not kill", I've been told the original Aramaic is "thou shalt not MURDER"; quite different, obviously, and needing no asterisk for killing soldiers in war, judicial executions, or legal abortions."

Really? So, please point out where these exceptions are defined. Is it not murder (by any definition) to look down the barrel of a rifle, acquire another human being as a target and consciously pull the trigger? Perhaps, we can all agree that a logical exception can be made if this is done to save another life or lives - as in the case of someone about to commit a murder or multiple murders being stopped by the use of deadly force.

If we are willing to accept the above example as valid, how do we justify the "killing" of someone who presents no immediate danger? Timothy McVeigh was strapped to a gurney and was incapable of harming anyone when he was knowingly injected with a lethal cocktail. (I use McVeigh as an example as he is as heinous an individual as I could think of.)

PunGent also said,

Pro-choice, not religious, and not fluent in Aramaic, personally."

Ironically, I am also pro-choice, not religious and believe we all have been given the right to exercise free will - and that our decisions are between ourselves and whatever diety you choose to believe in. However, if a human being is not a threat to others (as in locked away in prison) there is no reason to terminate their life.

Please note - I do not consider a fetus as being sentient life and I will further that statement by saying that anyone who is suffering from the final stages of Alzheimer's or has suffered a catastrophic stroke is probably no longer sentient either. I wouldn't let my dog suffer from that fate - nor should any human being.

hey mugen, i think i pointed out the difference that you requested of neo about four posts up. the one about wankin vs embryo death

shrapnil77
sorry to be an OT history cop, but God was very strict about allowing the captured women/children (even babies) from being integrated into the culture because with the people came the pagan religions. This seems brutal, but the native religion of Canaan forced parents to sacrifice their firstborn child into the flaming hands of Baal

Random Reality Check
Well, I'm going to have to think that somewhere in let's assume military law, it's defined how "to look down the barrel of a rifle, acquire another human being as a target and consciously pull the trigger" is not murder. Otherwise every single American veteran soldier would be on trial right now, right?
I don't know exactly the definition, or where it exists, but I can infer that it exists.

Random Reality Check: Please note - I do not consider a fetus as being sentient life and I will further that statement by saying that anyone who is suffering from the final stages of Alzheimer's or has suffered a catastrophic stroke is probably no longer sentient either.

Dr. Kevorkian, we have a patient

neocortex, now we must decide what gives something the right to live. is it sentience? bc if so, i agree with Reality Check, (yay, common ground lol!) and so fetus have no right to life in those circumstances. if that is not the case, then what endows right to life? personal property, bills, lol? if non sentient life has a right to live, then we shouldnt mow the lawn, but that is surely not the case. maybe what gives things the right to life is POTENTIAL to be sentient. can we take that potential away through abortion? ignorance is bliss, the fetus would never know. but potential does seem to be the most viable option to use as justification. remember, at some point in the fetus development it is less aware than a blade of grass. this is what we call a Slippery Slope argument in philosophy. Bad.

First of all, showing pictures of bowel surgery or the like could not have less to do with showing a murdered human. One is an organ, and one is a human LIFE. Nice analogy though.

Second, you can spout all of the legal terms you like, but it's just more shiny happy euphamisms to make it easier for you to sleep at night while millions of human lives are snuffed out, maybe even one that you helped create because you're too lazy/stubborn/stupid to use proper birth control. Talk about the sins of the father being visited upon the son.

Third, I think "Thou shalt not kill" pretty much establishes that the bible does contain an extremely direct and quite easy to understand passage about abortion. In fact, it's one of only 10 commandments....

I know, I know.....it's fiction so it doesn't matter. But underneath any of the legal mumbo-jumbo and religious instruction, no one feels comfortable with going in to a doctor to have them tear apart and remove the child that in most cases was created because of mistakes made by the parents who didn't want them to begin with. Your conscience is trying to tell you something, but all the legal terms and rosy euphamisms have helped to quiet that inner voice to a tolerable level. These people and their banners and signs are trying to call a spade a spade and maybe force that inner voice in people to start shouting again. I'm not saying I agree with their methods, but it does make you think about the reality of abortion and getting people thinking about such an important issue isn't a step in the wrong direction.

fubuvsfitch
To me that's the problem with any abortion argument. The only remotely defensible position is either that life begins conception or life begins at birth. Any other point is pretty arbitrary.
And yet, I have trouble thinking of a clump of 16 undifferentiated cells as "human". Can't defend that perpective worth crap, but there it is.

All I can say is that this is one of the most intelligent threads I've ever read on Fark. Ever.

Just for that, I'm going to say that:

"MY RELGON TELS ME KILLING BABYS IZ BAD"

/I argue on a morality and religion forum
//we deal with threads like this all the time
///most often, that's the reply we get

R2D2 ya, its gotta be an argument based on potential. but there are so many factors, like will the mother die if the fetus is not aborted? it seems like each abortion case should be assessed individually. what if the mom has cancer, and will die soon anyway, but having the kid will kill her a bit early?

/didnt someone wave the Utilitarian flag earlier? hahaha

fubu
Historically, this question has been answered by claiming that God gives the right to life and he alone can take it away.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The founding fathers recognized this and included it in the declaration of independence. However, as most farkers seem to be atheistic/agnostic, this is obviously not enough. With this viewpoint, life is defined by society and its laws. In America, we all agree that life is precious and should be protected. Conflict arises when the atheist/agnostic defines life as sentience and the religious person defines it as the possession of a soul

You're a Mean Drunk R2D2
Biologically, there is no question that life begins at conception. The question is, when does the fetus become human and gain protection under the law. As I said in my previous post, the hang-up that religious people have is their belief that humans have souls

i vote we sell stingers and rpg's to anyone who signs a contract to take down those abortion vans and airplanes.

R2D2 trying to define human is very hard. does it have to do with only sharing genotypes, cause if so, clumps of cells are human. Or does it have to do with phenotype and development? this invokes Plato's theory of forms. we have an idea of a circle in our head, but every cirle we see is of this world and so it has imperfections and does not match the one circle. how do we define the one human?
also, your point about when does life begin is mindboggling. although the cells cannot live on their own the cells have their own unique DNA and they are alive, most cells in a body are alive. but is it individual life? they need a host so... hahaha embryos are like a damned virus. so is it independence, like birth, or is it unique dna and potential?
Further, I question RIGHT to life here. how do we define right to life?

Taleya
Regarding EVERYONE as somebody else's property was pretty much par for the course back in those days. Children were their parent's property, slaves were their owner's property, the owners were the king's property, and the king was god's property.

mugen
WADR (With All Due Respect) kindly knock it off. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but neither am I some idiot whom you can confuse into quitting with florid language. That being said. . .

The whole "government of the people, by the people, for the people" thing sorta has the "laypersons" calling the shots. Joe Bloggs and my local dipshiat pastor (just for the record, this looked like a personal dig at me) may not write the laws, but they do vote. The to say that "the legal definition of murder is the only definition which attracts any sort of consequences or sanctions" is patently absurd. While they may be the only ones that attract direct civil (civil being the operative word here) action, individuals, communities and societies are quite capable of administering consequences without any any legal approval, e.g. boycotts, protests, etc. Everything that happened in South Africa under Apartheid was legal, and look what happened to THEM.
"But morality condemnation alone is insufficient to deter or punish murderers, rendering the moral conceptualisation completely impotent." Unless the moralizers themselves take action. While this is vigilantism (and murder by any definition), one would do well to be reminded that people have a way of being heard, whether through words or actions. As someone who should be famous said: "never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

All things considered, though, I fail to see what you're driving at. Are you saying that abortion should not be called murder simply because certian forms of it are not considered as such by current law? While a valid point, the larger concept ultimatly reduces it to a semantic trifle.

You're a Mean Drunk R2D2

An asshole? If he wants to characterise me as an asshole because I have no respect for that sort of capricious religious logic, then so be it.

fubuvsfitch

That seems fairly arbitrary as well. Moreover, it seems one specified post facto to accomodate the religious belief, rather than one justifiable on any practical or scientific grounds.

mugen
On purely scientific grounds, there is no way to determine whether or not abortion is wrong, because science is amoralistic. The question can only be decided with moral/ethical beliefs defined by the society

fubuvsfitch said,

"dude, i was just saying that any time a fetus is killed it is aborted. check the definition. just bc the incidents i mentioned are not of the mommy killing the kid doesnt mean fetuses were not aborted. those are mentions of abortion. what we have hear is a misunderstanding of the term abortion. Wittgenstein's language game is making us enemys."

Okay, I understand your use of the broader definition of the word "abortion" as in a shuttle launch being "aborted" but based on the context of this discussion I find that to be a stretch.

fubuvsfitch also said,

"Sorry if I was rude with the smart guy thing. Those quotes are abortions, just not mommy medical "induced abortion", the kind the people in the article are protesting."

I guess I owe you an apology also, please understand that this is an inflammatory subject and both of us may have gotten a bit more excited than was called for.

I will follow up on one of your comments with a disagreement that life begins at conception. Life to me (as I described above) begins at the point where an individual becomes aware and ends when that awareness ceases. This is a very important point to me as it defines not just where life begins but where it should be allowed to gracefully end. In this world where we can keep a person alive through artificial means we need to examine this philosophical point very closely.

Take, for example, the case of my aunt, an 88 year old woman who was supported on a respirator, intravenous tubes and a stomach (feeding) tube for nearly three months while her family argued over what was right. To my way of thinking, this use of medical technology artificiality extended her life, in effect, torturing her for no good reason. There was never any chance she would recover and have any meaningful life after she "recovered" and used up valuable medical resources that, quite frankly, could have been used elsewhere - yet this kind of thinking permeates our society.

Your thoughts?

neo, those founding fathers were talking about fully grown white males being equal.
also, we cannot let religious ideology influence us, so we must trust that if there is a god, he gave us the capacity to reason out the right answer to tricky shiat like this.
ya, good point bout the root of the problem though. i am agnostic and trying to reason things out so both sides can clearly see the correct decision (hahahaha thatll happen). but ya, great point, that disparity will always be there, but also it is not our right to tell others how to live is it? i dunno but i dont think so. but should abortion having mommies be tried as murderers? i think maybe some super hardcore god gave us a soul pro lifers might think so and that is scary.
i personally think using reason and sound logic is better than assuming god did this and intends that cause otherwise it just seems to be opinion and emotional appeal.

neocortex

True, however science may define various aspects on which ethics may be brought into play, such as the time at which a foetus is sufficiently developed to feel pain.

In the most favourable assessment, the scientific basis upon which the conception argument is founded is that the ova is fertilised. That seems a pretty shiat and unreasonable basis for making hyperbolic claims of murder.

neocortex
But laws come from representatives that the people elect to create laws that are morally right and/or economically feasable and/or practically enforceable and/or results in a productive societ and/or .... probably some other constraints.

I think most people would have a problem with it if an 8 month and 29 day pregnant woman was trying to get an abortion, and just just because the law said it was illegal.

to me life is every cell in my body, sperm and egg alone are alive. once sperm mixes with egg it has its own dna blah blah blah but it is not independent or sentient blah blah blah but it has potential blah...
i see your point about sentience as making a more real and individual life life that matters, if you will.
sorry to hear about your aunt, hopefully she was in a peaceful dream state. the dissention amongst family is unfortunate. that is why it is important for each of us to write a will so if we progress so closely to death that there seems to be no way back... know what i mean its up to the individual really so its hard to think what your aunt would have wanted for herself.

fubu
My point was that without some moral/ethical standards, there is no way to decide whether or not abortion is wrong. In the Darwinian view, abortion is wrong because it prevents the survival of your genes. In a slightly elevated, more practical view, abortion is right because life is an accident and you should do whatever you have to in order to rise to the top. There is no resolution without morals

and just just because the law said it was illegal.

Jeeze, I meant "and NOT just because the law said it was illegal".
It's gotten way too late for me all. It's been remarkably civil for any fark thread, especially one about abortion. Rock on.

Reality, ya it is a little out of context, cause the article is about mommy willing abortion, and the examples in the good book that I know of are of outsiders aborting the fetus. so i guess i was being a little technical and out of context.

neocortex

Not necessarily. From memory quite a few species, both plant and animal, will abort in conditions of hardship because it increases the chances of the survival of the parent and future offspring. Unfortunately google is so farking crammed with fundie pro-life nonsense that I couldn't get any specific examples, but I'm almost certain that it is a frequent natural phenomenon.

neo, you are correct, there is no resolution without morals, but you must have valid reasons for holding your moral ideals, not cause god said so. you can arrive at these valid reasons through reason and logical equivolance. good point though, but i wasnt saying morals should must be absend, heck no. assigning moral values to things is necessary. but there has got to be a better reason than bc a book told me to or my pastor said so. i mean, those really arent valid reasons.

neocortex My reaction is a resounding "meh." I know what I've read in the bible (HISTORICALLY) and I know fragments from other cultures all over the world at various points in history. This is why I try and steer clear of goofy religions. I agree, though, that they weren't accepting of other religions; it's how gods stay competitive. That being said, however, a conversion is a net gain of two, because they lose one and you gain one. Killing them is a net gain of one. The OT lays forth specific guidelines for conversion.
I'm not saying anything stupid, like ancient Judea was warm and fuzzy and multi-cultural. I'm saying that dealing with "the other" using methods that had a death rate lower than 1:1 existed.
That being said, I bow to your authority as an OT geek. I just dabble a bit.
::Arm is tired, but the utilitarianism flag still waves::

mugen Why is it that you have such distain for caprecious religious reasoning but such deferance for equally-caprecious legal reaoning?

I see those images and all I can think is "I could go for some bbq right now."

mugen.: True, however science may define various aspects on which ethics may be brought into play, such as the time at which a foetus is sufficiently developed to feel pain.

hippocratic oath
I will neither prescribe nor administer a lethal dose of medicine to any patient even if asked nor counsel any such thing nor perform the utmost respect for every human life from fertilization to natural death and reject abortion that deliberately takes a unique human life.

Ever since hippocrate's day, doctors who take the oath are ethically bound not to perform abortions, because it "takes a unique human life." The larger question beyond when life begins is, does every human have the right to life. Debating about when life begins is merely semantics

theres that flag again... lol
hey shrap gotta remember those looney tunes who would rather kill people of other religions or races rather than convert them. some just wont convert, also.