Abortion is morally wrong

[vodkafan]

Is the stem cell now a human being because it was fused with an unfertilized egg? Is the unfertilized egg now a human being because it was fused with a stem cell? These are misleading questions. The unfertilized egg and the stem cell are constituent parts.....that's it. Put those constituent parts together and now you have a human being. The stem cell doesn't gain protected status. The stem cell ceases to exist. A human being begins its existence. The product of this process gains "human being status" because the product of this process is a human being.

No it isn't. Not till it's able to survive on its own. There is a threshold it has to develop to first.

---

[Heywood]

Is the stem cell now a human being because it was fused with an unfertilized egg? Is the unfertilized egg now a human being because it was fused with a stem cell? These are misleading questions. The unfertilized egg and the stem cell are constituent parts.....that's it. Put those constituent parts together and now you have a human being. The stem cell doesn't gain protected status. The stem cell ceases to exist. A human being begins its existence. The product of this process gains "human being status" because the product of this process is a human being.

No it isn't. Not till it's able to survive on its own. There is a threshold it has to develop to first.

---

Vodka, the amount of care the mother gives to her fetus is the same as she gives to the bacteria that inhabits her gut. The mother's womb happens to be the environment in which the fetus lives, just as the gut is the environment bacteria live. Both are independent living beings. The fetus lives just fine in the womb without any intervention on the mother's part. It survives in the mother's womb....on its own.

[vodkafan]

No it isn't. Not till it's able to survive on its own. There is a threshold it has to develop to first.

---

Vodka, the amount of care the mother gives to her fetus is the same as she gives to the bacteria that inhabits her gut. The mother's womb happens to be the environment in which the fetus lives, just as the gut is the environment bacteria live. The fetus lives just fine in the womb without any intervention on the mother's part.

No. Simply not true. The relationship is more like that of a symbiotic relationship. Huge hormonal and bodily changes. If the mother's body is injured then materials can even be despatched from the fetus to repair the mother, up to a point. Heywood, you are stretching the point to relate a human baby to bacteria in the gut. Everybody knows that it takes 9 months to grow a healthy human baby. It is a pretty impressive process. You seem to want us to agree that it is a full human being from the moment of conception when cells start dividing. It isn't. Many such zygotes are aborted naturally within three months.
You want us to agree to full human status so that you can argue that killing such a zygote is morally wrong.

[Heywood]

Vodka, the amount of care the mother gives to her fetus is the same as she gives to the bacteria that inhabits her gut. The mother's womb happens to be the environment in which the fetus lives, just as the gut is the environment bacteria live. The fetus lives just fine in the womb without any intervention on the mother's part.

No. Simply not true. The relationship is more like that of a symbiotic relationship. Huge hormonal and bodily changes. If the mother's body is injured then materials can even be despatched from the fetus to repair the mother, up to a point. Heywood, you are stretching the point to relate a human baby to bacteria in the gut. Everybody knows that it takes 9 months to grow a healthy human baby. It is a pretty impressive process. You seem to want us to agree that it is a full human being from the moment of conception when cells start dividing. It isn't. Many such zygotes are aborted naturally within three months.
You want us to agree to full human status so that you can argue that killing such a zygote is morally wrong.

A zygote is a human being. Like I said earlier...arguing that it isn't is like arguing the world is flat.....I don't take people who put forth such arguments too seriously. Now should human beings which are in their embryonic stage be morally protected? That's a different question entirely.

[Bibliofagus]

If I am responsible, or freely engaged in an activity that I knew had the possibility of creating a dependent, helpless human life, than I owe that human whatever assistance she needs to survive.

Assuming you realise a guy is needed as well, what does he 'owe'?
And furthermore: Does the 'owing' stop at birth or does it go on? Since babies can't survive on their own...

And what about rape victims? Do they 'owe' as well?

[bennyboy]

A zygote is a human being. Like I said earlier...arguing that it isn't is like arguing the world is flat.....I don't take people who put forth such arguments too seriously. Now should human beings which are in their embryonic stage be morally protected? That's a different question entirely.

I don't think you have considered what the word "being" means. A zygote is MAYBE a human, but most definitely not a human being. That's why your analogy fails-- what constitutes a human being is largely an arbitrary and subjective determination. What determines flatness, or whether the world is flat, is not.

[vodkafan]

A zygote is a human being. Like I said earlier...arguing that it isn't is like arguing the world is flat.....I don't take people who put forth such arguments too seriously. Now should human beings which are in their embryonic stage be morally protected? That's a different question entirely.

By definition of law the zygote is not yet a human being. That's all we need to know. Human embryos are protected after a certain stage of development, or, to be more precise, we punish mothers who try to abort after that threshold.
Up to that point, the protection of the zygote is down to the woman who's womb is carrying it. It is HER moral decision.

Why do you think that is insufficient?
Why do you think society should interfere?

[bennyboy]

Vodka, the amount of care the mother gives to her fetus is the same as she gives to the bacteria that inhabits her gut. The mother's womb happens to be the environment in which the fetus lives, just as the gut is the environment bacteria live. Both are independent living beings. The fetus lives just fine in the womb without any intervention on the mother's part. It survives in the mother's womb....on its own.

This is scientifically wrong.

---

By definition of law the zygote is not yet a human being.

There are many good arguments to be made, but this is not one of them. Law has nothing to do with moral arguments, except if you are arguing that breaking a law is intrinsically immoral. And you are not making that argument.

[pocaracas]

So this is where you all have been hiding!!
A "brand new" abortion thread... wow...

I admit I haven't gone through the whole thread... just page 1 and this (22).

I think this debate is usually posing the question wrong, and the answers that come out also seem wrong...
Some people seem to value all kind of potential human life and see abortion as problematic, ever since conception.

Some people realize that a fetus is worth less than a baby, so they'd drop the petri dish with the fertilized egg, meaning there must be some sort of threshold between fetus and baby.
- Some place this threshold at birth... makes sense, since this is the time when the new baby can apply for citizenship.
- Some place this threshold at the statistically achieved gestation duration which is conducent to a viable baby out of the mother's womb.... typically, around the 25th week of gestation.
- Some place this threshold at the gestation duration at which the fetus has a nervous system and can feel itself dying, typically around the 15~20th week of gestation.
- Some place this threshold at the time when a chemically induced abortion no longer works, around 10-15th week gestation.

Now the tricky part, doctors count "weeks of gestation" starting at the end of the last menstruation, effectively, (typically) 2 weeks before the actual conception.

For most people, at the 5th week of gestation (one week after period misses) they know what has happened and are either very happy, or at a loss in their lives with that "news". This gives them at least (based on the options listed above) 5 weeks time to decide what to do. That's a lot of time.... more than one month!

That would be the standard case... the majority... but morality must apply for all, right?
How about those people who find out they're pregnant when they're delivering the baby? It's kind of hard to abort when you're giving birth.... ok... bad example.
How about those people who go on having what looks like menstruation, but only notice the bulge at 3, or 4 or even 5 months gestation? Should these be allowed to abort, if the law is built up for the standard case? If these people are allowed to abort, how to tell if you're permitting a standard woman who's lying about not knowing? Should you just allow it for all up until birth?

What happens if you just prohibit abortions? People who get pregnant by accident will still exist, and some of them will still feel the need to abort and some of these will actually do it, somehow. Are we, as a society, willing to risk the health and lives of these women who go for a non-safe method, or are we willing to let them have access to proper medical care when performing such an act?

What's better? It would be nice to have statistics on this.
If abortion is allowed, even if just until the 10th week of gestation, lots of women will abort safely and live out their lives normally, most of them coming to become mothers at a time of their choosing.
If it is not allowed, some will abort anyway and some of those will have complications and it becomes very unlikely that they get to become future mothers. Most (I think) would abort and go on with their lives, conscious of the fact that they broke the law, but heck, no one finds out.
If you impose a limit on the gestation period up to when the abortion is allowed, then there will always be a few that are too late in realizing that they want to have the abortion. The same thing must apply: some keep the baby, some go for an illegal abortion with all the possible complications it entails.

As I see it, the moral choice is the one that brings the greater good, the most good for the most people, or like Spock said, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."
Abortion will happen, regardless. Is it not better to look after the health of these women who wish to abort in order for them to become better future mothers?


TL;DR: To me, the moral choice seems to be to let the women abort, but I'd put a limit of about 20 weeks gestation. Beyond that, they have to carry it to term and then either keep the baby or give it up for adoption if they really must.

[Esquilax]

My position is that killing human beings for convenience is immoral. I am pro-life, anti-capital punishment for this reason.

"Convenience."

Again, this really creepy, condescending minimization of what the issue actually is, and the toll this can take on a woman. Is the pro-forced birth side so hard up for empathy that they can only consider the abortion procedure itself, and nothing of the surrounding context?