dangit Prado ninja'd me

i am sloooow

@YaleUnc: "It is a bizarre interpretation to take that to mean that a person's DNA must be unique to warrant protected human status. What is actually means is that your DNA does not change when you leave the womb. I.e. You are the same organism genetically (human) in the womb as out of it."

Your claim is that having different DNA means it is a different organism.
And my claim is that 1) some things can be different without having differetn DNA (ie identical twins) and 2) some things can be not different while having different DNA (ie chimeras)

Thus our claim fails to either be necessary nor sufficient. That is all. I didn't say your were claiming it needed to be unique.

When it comes to uniquenes, this misconception about DNA will become more important when we can take a skin cell from an adult and turn it into a zygote to imant an this clone that adult... Which at present is, i suspect, just beyond our techncal capabilities.

@ "Lesson 1. Do not compare a fetus to a parasite or cancerous growth. It doesn't matter how justifiable you believe that to be scientifically, it will not win anyone over. Indeed, quite the reverse."

Are you accusing people of being emotional in their analysis? Or that i should be appealing to emotion to be more convincing.

I am not willing to resort to that, i should not tell people how to feel about about abortion. If you feel it is wrong, you should choose not to have one. But you shouldn't let anyone tell you how you feel.

If however you are going to describe to me the science which you think backs up your position - i will compare and contrast with similar biological analogues.

Describing a fetus as a parasite is an accurate biological description. You could also deacribe is as a sexually transmitted disease (just look at the definition of disease!) And it is often treated as suchby people trying to avoid both STDs and pregnancy.

But octavious. If you are so wise, perhaps you can offer a 'to do' instead of what not to do.

@ ora

You genuinely don't see why that line of reasoning is counterproductive? You're being serious now? I am truly stunned...

Ora - for the third time I have never claimed what you keep saying I claimed. My claim is that the organism's DNA does not change upon being born. This has absolutely nothing to do with the straw man you keep attacking about DNA having to be different to be a different organism.

Nobody has mentioned that most of the Latin American refugees which cross the border aren't Mexican. Most come from Central American countries like El Salvador with the highest murder rates in the world. Yes, most anyone who spends a fortune and risks their life with people traffickers to get out of their native country is a refugee.

And economic parasites, really? Believe it or not, undocumented residents buy stuff. More purchases translate into more tax revenue for the state and boosted economic growth for the local community.

The real economic parasites are us, who consume orders of magnitude more energy and natural resources than our fellow humans in underdeveloped and developing countries.

I'll just say it's definitely warped to care more about the life of unborn fetal cells than the life of an independent person/family seeking shelter in your home/city/country for whatever reason. And these are the religious people supposedly.

Please can someone teach paragraphs to Atheos.

Paragraphs are dangerous when driving.

True. Paragraphless monologues are always much safer.

i'm struggling to follow this thread, but i'd be interested to know what is the point at which a fetus stops being pre-human (unhuman?) and can then be classified as human and afforded the same legal rights as a human with regards to the preservation and right to life.

thanks!

18 yrs

@Yaleunc ... I wasn't saying that a fetus was an alien or somehow not the same species as all other fetuses of our species. I was saying it hasn't yet been born. I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion.

I also don't know who fights for the right to abort a fetus in the third trimester. The "I didn't know I was pregnant" phase usually passes long before then. Please enlighten me here, seriously. It was already ruled on by SCOTUS, so I would be kind of shocked if people legitimately tried to reverse that decision in order to free up abortions in the third trimester. The only people I hear from trying to reverse Roe v Wade are those who want to outlaw abortion in the one or both of the other trimesters.

@Atheos … as above, seriously, please paragraph if you actually want me to read what you say. If you don't care if I read it, then by all means, keep going as is and I simply won't read it. Also, don't post and drive. It's not texting but the cops won't believe you anyway.

@BFG … a fetus is no longer a fetus when it is no longer sustained by the mother - i.e. when the mother gives birth. Up until then, the mother's right to life comes before the fetus's right to life. If the mother's life or in some instances greater health isn't at stake during the third trimester in the US, she typically can't abort the fetus in most states - whichever ones have outlawed it since 1973. That's Roe v Wade.

@bo_sox - thanks for that ! So then, to be human is in essence not dependant upon another to sustain life?

But surely a new born is unable to sustain it's own life without someone else feeding it? Therefore why is this 'sustaining' different from the sustaining in the womb, that is able to be used as the differentiator in determining when a fetus is a person.

I'm intrigued - genuinely

To be human is to be of our species. I don't think there is much of a debate there. It is a simple fact, though, that some humans enjoy more rights and privileges than others - for example, minors, people under 18 in this country, don't have the same privileges that non-minors do. It's a different set of rights and laws.

A fetus is dependent on the woman who carries it. Nobody else can perform those tasks (though science is doing a damn good job trying to change that). Once it is born, it is still dependent, but not solely on that one person. An unwanted baby can be put up for adoption without terrible inconvenience most of the time. It can also be cared for by people other than the mother, be it other family members, friends, or anyone. It's dependent, but it is now dependent in the same way that the law here deems minors are dependent - they need a caretaker, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific one.

'To be human is to be of our species' agreed, but the argument seems to be that the only distinction between a fetus being part of our species and afforded the same human rights as our species is that a fetus is unable to sustain its own life without the woman who carries it.

Therefore if i'm following correctly, if a fetus was able to sustain its own existence apart from the woman who carries it, then it is able to classified no longer as a fetus but now a human?
Even if that meant that the fetus was needing sustaining help apart from the role that the woman who carries the fetus perfoms (e.g a life support machine at lets say 24 weeks or gestation)

I guess so. A fetus outside the body doesn't threaten the mother's health anymore and it can already be raised independently or put up for adoption, so I don't see why that is an issue related to abortion at all.

@Yaleunc "My claim is that the organism's DNA does not change upon being born."

That is true, but you said it in responce to: "It being human is not the debate. The debate lies in when it becomes it's own being.

For instance, if I were to chop my finger off, am I commiting murder? the finger is definitely human tissue and without the nourishment of the rest of my body, it will die. Or course this is ludicrous to say I am murdering life because it's a part of me."

What did you mean? I mean, I'm jsut showing you that DNA isn't the be all and end all of identifying what is and isn't a part of you...

I think i made that clear with multiple examples. Given the context, and the exact quote "3) I've had plenty of biology classes. I haven't had the one that says your DNA changes when you are extracted from your mother's womb" i assumed you wanted some biology classing...

@"I guess so. A fetus outside the body doesn't threaten the mother's health anymore and it can already be raised independently or put up for adoption, so I don't see why that is an issue related to abortion at all. "

At that point there is no clash between the fetus' rights and the woman's rights (she's not a mother unless she is doing some mothering...)

She can choose to risk her life by keeping the fetus to term. That is a risk nobody can make her take. She can also choose to protect her life. That is what being pro-choice means.

Once outside the womb, you have to make a medical decision as to whether the fetus - now baby - can survive; whether it will suffer prolonged agony from being on life-support; whether it will even be able to develop to be a healthy baby.

Usually when we're making these decisions it is about old people dying from incurable illnesses, and who have lost the capacity to make their own decision. This is just about the opposite end of 'life' but we also need to be careful in who we empower to make these decisions.

Do we rely on family? Or on doctors? Do we draft in lawyers and judges?

These are the tough questions.

Orathaic - you are totally mistaken. You have my post confused with some other post. My post was related to Bo's post about a fetus not being a human. For some reason you are adding context that wasn't there and wasn't related to my post. Go back and re read my posts and the ones they reference rather than what you imagine they are about in your head.

Actually you are not totally mistaken I guess. That context quote you have above is from yoyo's post which I addressed in points 4-6 (the ones that start with "as to yoyo's points")but my quote about DNA not changing was from point 3 which was in the 1-3 section addressing Bo's posts about a fetus not being a human. Yoyo wanted to change the discussion to something else from what Bo and I were talking about but if I meant the DNA statement to apply to what yoyo was raising I would have put it in the section "as to yoyo's points".

Apologies. I missed the context that you were replying to.

Yes, DNA does not change. It is a human fetus, nobody disagrees with that (and if they do they are wrong)

I think the point is whether we defend it as if it were a human person.

The edges of life are fuzzy; when do we turn off life-support? Who makes that decision? Do we allow otherwise healthy people commit suicide. Or support that decision? Do we restrict their bodily autonomy? Or do we only allow terminally ill people commit suicide??

All these questions are at the edge of life. The questions at the other end are equally valid. When does it become worth protecting?

These are not easy questions. And while we can look at individual cell collections, or cognitive abilities of a collection of neurons (i which case i will start comparing adult cattle to new born babies) we can look at it another way - as a process, as a whole, not just a single part of the system, in a single stage - this can ive us a different perspective.

But it is rather hard. The fetus is part of a process which can lead to a human person, that person may be healthy, and they may be part of a society. Many factors may impact their quality of life, not limited to whether their mother choose to bring them into the world, or was forced to.

Their quality of life may depend on social supports, local community, familial love, economic circumstaces, and too many things to count. In most cases, however, the potential mother is in the best position to weigh up these questions. If the potential father is involved and wants to raise a child, then this is information the potential mother will likely consider.

I am never in a position where i can make that decision for a woman. It is never my body at risk, or my future child whose quality of life is at stake.

I can argue for a socialist utopia (and have done here) and for a universal basic income... And many ofher things which will affect that quality of life (like migrant rights, and comprehensive sex ed) but i can't make these things a reality - and even if they become reality, it should still be the woman's choice, even if that teality changes the information she bases that choice upon.

I believe all these thigs are pro-quality of life.

I take it you agree we should draw a line somewhere. Two extremes exist - those that say a new born can't really be shown to he self-aware and thus doesn't deserve to be considered a person, and those who argue that once a zygote is formed it has a soul and must be protected.

If you live in the real world, i presume you take a position somewhere between these two extremes.

Is that fair?

To argue that a fetus with a pulse and with brain activity has not yet achieved personhood defies logic -- unless you start out with the presumption that abortion must be sustained, and work backwards from that presumption in search of a rationalization that justifies your position. Because personhood is the bright line at which abortion becomes intolerable. That's why all pro-abortion arguments hinge on dehumanizing the fetus.

Who in the fuck is pro-abortion?

"Who in the fuck is pro-abortion?"
For a start, eugenicists and "psycho" Malthusians (for the latter, see this: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10077). But presumably no one, or almost no one, on this site.

A question for fellow believers that abortion should be permitted in the current state of affairs:

When we reach the stage where a fetus of any age can be removed from the mother and grown in an artificial womb (for the sake of argument lets say both abortions and these transfers carry similar risk to the mother's health) should abortion be outlawed?

@Octavious: no.

I stand by my position that the quality of life of the potential child should be taken into consideration. And that no institution has the right to make that decision for a woman.

That circumstance would however add to the choices available to the woman.

@Octavious
"You genuinely don't see why that line of reasoning is counterproductive? You're being serious now? I am truly stunned..."

You seem to be of the opinion that a comparison is the same as equating two things.

I am not saying 'a fetus is just a parasite', i was likewise comparing it to a tumour to show that DNA isn't the thing Yaleunc wasn't... Oh wait i apologized for misunderstanding the context of that quote. But comparison is good for highlighting the similarities AND differences.

Nobody engaged this point, maybe because it is different, but a fetus has the potential to become a person, and neither tumors not parasites have that. I think this is clear, and other similar things (like bacteria which are part of us but don't have our DNA - yes both the positive and the negative) Should be understood.

The distinction is obvious. And we ive special consideration because of that.

No, ora, I am of the opinion that in terms of winning people over to your point of view the argument is a complete non-starter. It doesn't matter if it is well intentioned or scientifically accurate or misleading, by using cancerous growths and parasites you lose your audience before you even start. You can travel from Ireland to England by heading west, but that doesn't make it the right direction.

I appreciate your honesty regarding the abortion/transfer question, although I struggle to understand the justification.