RE: New Iowa Law Restricts Abortion To Before Most Women Know They're Pregnant
May 14, 2018 at 5:58 pm
(This post was last modified: May 14, 2018 at 5:59 pm by The Industrial Atheist.)
(May 14, 2018 at 3:41 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(May 14, 2018 at 2:16 pm)The Industrial Atheist Wrote: Fetuses (and Zygotes)are not babies. Christians are taught to call them that/think of them as that. I think this kind of obfuscates matters. I think it's hard to come to the conclusion that abortion is immoral without believing in things like predestination and god in general.
Thing is, if every fertilized egg cell is a baby, with a destiny, does that mean that god had a destiny for the fertilized egg cells that were lost during menstruation? Seems kind of wasteful for a perfect god. That also means he designed abortion into the natural functioning of women's bodies
I think that a pretty good case can be made for calling a fetus a baby. There is nothing within the definition of "baby", that prohibits it, and it is quite common, even among doctors I have found, to call the growing fetus a baby. So I don't see where that is obfuscating things at all; and it sometimes seems, that proponents of abortion want to call it a fetus, to de-humanize it. I'm will to compromise, and call it a separate and distinct human being, if you want to be technical. We can even add fetus in there, if it makes you feel better.
As, to your comment about being unable to come to the conclusion that abortion is wrong without believing in God. I would ask, how you come to such moral conclusions for an older child or an adult? Some would say that you cannot have a basis for any objective morals without God.
Your last paragraph seems to be, what they call over at the uncommon descent blog whataboutism (or whataboutery). It's a varient of the tu quoque fallacy, where in place of an argument or reason, one tries to shift the subject to something else and try to show some kind of hypocrisy rather than refute the logic. This one, I think is particularly bad, because with similar reasoning, it would also folllow, that because people die from disease and accidents, that it is also ok to murder people without justification. I don't think anyone is arguing either (unless you are advocating it).
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Sure people that generally want babies might call a fetus a baby, but a fetus is not empirically an infant.
also:https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/fetal-development/fetal-brain-nervous-system/
Third trimester: Baby's brain grows
The third trimester is brimming with rapid development of neurons and wiring. Baby's brain roughly triples in weight during the last 13 weeks of gestation, growing from about 3.5 ounces at the end the second trimester to almost 10.6 ounces at term. And it's starting to look different, too: Its formerly once smooth surface is becoming increasingly grooved and indented (like the images of brains you're used to seeing).
At the same time, the cerebellum (motor control) is developing fast — faster now than any other area of the fetal brain (its surface area increases 30-fold in the last 16 weeks of pregnancy!).
All of this growth is big news for the cerebral cortex (thinking, remembering, feeling). Though this important area of the brain is developing rapidly during pregnancy, it really only starts to function around the time a full-term baby is born — and it steadily and gradually matures in the first few years of life, thanks to baby's enriching environment.
Being able to think and feel is what makes us human. If the fetus can only think and feel on an animal level, it isn't different from an animal. An older child or adult can think and reason as human can, because they aren't a fetus.
I'm sorry it's silly to equate a clump of cells that can't think any better than a dog or cat, with your 43 year old uncle Bob. It's not the same.
(May 14, 2018 at 2:17 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Your idea of what differentiate a baby from a cloud of tissue that can exorcised with nary a look is based purely on an ignorant religious fiction concocted during the Bronze Age to overawe the ignorant, illiterate and gullible so that the priests, prophets and other hucksters can dominate and profit.
Nope... that must be your idea, because I said nothing of the sort!
(May 14, 2018 at 5:45 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: I doubt this law stands the test. I see it as a political ploy to appease the christian right, nothing more. The gov gets to say "well at least I tried".
If I'm correct, that makes this a really sad commentary on the US political landscape.
I hope you're right, but they may manage to force hundreds or thousands of unwanted births in the meantime!
