So, what do you think? Do you agree with the Genocide Awareness Project's stance that abortion is genocide?
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So, what do you think? Do you agree with the Genocide Awareness Project's stance that abortion is genocide?
Maybe we should send the Genocide Awareness Project a dictionary...
Pharynguloids, hooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Guh...
Goddamnit I hate people like that. NO! IT'S NOT GENOCIDE! Fuck off! (Sorry I just can't be nice about them anymore. Fuck them.)
43% Y
57% N
Do they even know what "genocide" means?
Even if you define abortion as killing, you're killing your own people.
"Suigenocide?"
Meh, who needs logic when you have rhetoric, right?
Who the hell are these people? Wait, I think I can guess.
I concede that mass abortion focefully imposed might be considered genocide. Say if our army went into another courty and began to slice open pregnant ladies and dash babies upon the rocks.
wait a minute...
Speaking of the illiterate, that goof Ben Stein was on CTV news here in Canada this morning.
Guess what? Nobody can explain how life started, gravity or what pulls the lightning to the Earth so it follows that it must have been created by a big goof in the sky.
He got into the Darwinist neo-Darwinist garbage and brought in the Nazi thing which he heard from an employee at a German holocaust site - so it's obviously true. Um, I think he means eugenics or just plain old pandering to the cheap seats using a scapegoat but I'm no match for Stein's obvious intellect.
He said that just mentioning ID (too bad his Mum didn't use an IUD) is getting lots of professors, etc, fired from their jobs.
Blah blah blah I couldn't believe it. I guess he's branching out, thinking we Canucks will buy into it. Even the interviewer who is a notorious gull (and had seen the movie, which took her on 'quite a journey' apparently) was obviously put off by his bullshit about Nazis, scientists, lightning, etc.
They don't have a clip up at CTV.ca, unfortunately and I don't have a recorder. Or maybe that's fortunate.
What do you expect from the Kentucky Agricultural College - literacy? (Yes, I AM from Louisville. Why do you ask?) ;-)
JC
Yes 41%
No 59%
I love this part:
This KY Kernel poll is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole.
so, what use is this poll anyway?
@techskeptic: It's usually just there for funs.
I dunno. It gives us something to do on a Monday.
Fixed.
This is doubleplus ungood.
Let's just throw all bad words in a pile and use them interchangeably; ditto for good words. People who pay their bills can be heroes, men who make suggestive remarks to coworkers can be rapists; polluting is murder, etc. It will save a lot of thinking, and avoid all those troublesome arguments over nuance and consequences. Who can argue over genocide, or claim that it's sometimes necessary or even somebody's right?
And while we're at it, let's dump all those hermits, runaways, schizophrenics, crooks on the lam, bums, tramps, and hobos, and replace them with "homeless". If there's only one kind of people, then they need only solution, right?
I always liked Reason Magazine's take on abortion and genocide:
Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?
Puts things in perspective. Even my mom, an anti-abortion zealot, paused when we she read that one.
I like these two questions in succession:
Do you think UK should allow residents with concealed-carry permits to carry weapons on campus? (81% Yes)
Was the increase in security following Saturday's football game against LSU successful? (43% Yes)
Woo-Hoo! My vote made the wedges change. Fun! I'm going to try it again.
As an atheist, and I'm sure I speak only for myself, killing the unborn - and we all know that a blastocyst is totally equal to a living person - is wrong in that we atheists do not get to eat them. We love eating babies.
My vote made the wedges change.
Hmmmm. New meaning to the term "wedge strategy"? Perhaps not. ID thinks they can "vote" the truth as well.
Another religious poll to prove that life is sacred. Life is not sacred; the Universe has never deigned it to be.
Here's another poll: Have you Pharyngulites watched the COSMOS marathon on the SCIENCE CHANNEL on Sunday?
In the segment, "Travels In Space and Time", Carl cautions the dire results "If we capitualte to superstition".
And in the segment "The Edge of Forever" Carl says among related statements, "If it is said that god was always there, let's go a few steps further, and say "The Universe
Was Always There". My man Carl Sagan!
bums, tramps, and hobos
While there's a lot of geographical diversity among the commenters here, it's always refreshing to hear voices from other eras. I wish you folks from the 1920s would visit more often. :)
I agree with Epinephrine @ #1 - let's just send them a dictionary. They obviously don't know what their own name means.
65 yes / 35 no
both before & after my vote.
I'm still wondering why God hates amputees. Did Stein address that simple question? I'm sure there must be an elaborate answer, proving the complexity of life all the biologists are always talking about.
OOPS! I transposed the numbers .. pity I can't delete my own comment. Actual figures are:
65 no / 35 yes
both before & after my vote.
If you want to be down with web 2.0 you gotta have polls!
Oh, the best part of the god-botherers take on "ensouled at conception!" is how IVF would work.
The result: some lab tech, with just a drop from a pipet, can FORCE a supposedly-omnipotent diety to create hundreds of new souls.
"Take THAT, Jaweh!" The bespecticaled nerd in a stained lab coat cackled evilly, "I bend you to MY WILL!, Bwahahaha!"
It's as if they think that abortion is preventing that woman from being a mother ever again. Women can and do get pregnant / carry to term in the months following an abortion. She could even have a second baby on the due date of the first pregnancy.
Gen-o-cide: the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
So ~33% of people believe that fetuses constitute one of a national, racial, political, or cultural group AND that they are deliberately and systematically being exterminated. Fucking wackloons.
Not only do I not agree with them, I don't think they actually agree with themselves.
That is, assuming that by "genocide," they really mean "mass murder," and if we judge what they believe by what policies they actually support, I don't think most abortion foes really believe abortion is murder. If they did, none of them would support rape-or-incest exceptions (because since when does a father's crime justify his child's murder?), nor would they settle for the candy-ass punishments that are invariably included in attempts to criminalize abortion (e.g., the South Dakota law, under which the abortionist is guilty only of a Class 5 felony and the woman who hired him/her is guilty of nothing at all), nor would they hold touchy-feely support groups for women who regret their abortions. Until abortion opponents start actually advocating policies that are logically consistent with their claimed belief that a fetus is a fully vested human life and killing it is murder, I will continue to believe that they're not only wrong, but lying!
Hey, isn't that a Cher song?
So if abortion is "genocide," what is "removing the right to bodily integrity of 52% of the population"?
Oh, right: "Business as usual."
The SC "Would you buy an "I Believe" license plate" poll is still up at the Post and Courier.
I think we need to make a poll stating:
Put that up on a hyper-wonky religious site and sit back and watch the madness unfold. It would be like tapping the glass on a fish tank.
Well, kermit, pollution is murder.
"GAP" is pretty much the right acronym for the organization. I think their synaptic gaps may be a bit too large, though.
Speaking of poll freeping did you lot see that Prospect/Foreign policy "Intellectuals" thing in today´s papers?
Gotta love demonstrations of the inanity of internet polls - even when faith-heads do it.
No, no, Interrobang, you've got it all wrong. If women were 52% of the population, why, that would mean we were *people*, a supposition that is ridiculous on its face.
As is plain to all, the only humans that matter are the en-penised. I mean, if women were people, we might have to, you know, change some shit! Hell, we might even have to have a culture that doesn't tacitly approve of/trivialize rape and murder! Frankly that is just too much work - it's much easier and better to let vast numbers of women suffer needlessly.
Hey, isn't that a Cher song?
I can't imagine why my more sociological version - "Families with Small Children, Veterans, and People with Substance-Abuse Problems" - hasn't caught on yet...
Oh noes! A woman has snuck in and started talking!
We're all going to die! Thunderbolts! Fire and brimstone! That frozen blue stuff that falls out of airplane crappers!
Curse you woman! Why do you hate humanity so much that you would voice, let alone have, an opinion?
Oh, now I get it! I'm all muzzy & vaporish because it's not eggs I'm packin', it's SOULS. Silly me!
These people came to Appalachian State last semester and set up a giant, horrific display for two days outside the student union. I interviewed several of their members, and they strangely reminded me of new-agers. One woman constantly talked about how she wanted to raise awareness so the world would become more peaceful and everyone would feel more brotherly and sisterly love. Here's an article from the school paper:
http://theapp.appstate.edu/content/view/3633/43/
But if anyone wants pictures of what their displays contain, send me an email:
solumpki@gmail.com
I can proudly say that there were more student protesters than GAP members out there, though. Some students also went out to make fun of both sides and held up a bunch of signs that said stuff like "Buddy Satan," "Give SATAN one more chance," "Satan/Christ 08 - for our children's future," and "GOD vacations in hell!"
Sweet satire.
Cant be any weirder than this strange sign.
As an atheist, and I'm sure I speak only for myself, killing the unborn - and we all know that a blastocyst is totally equal to a living person - is wrong in that we atheists do not get to eat them. We love eating babies.
They make great pate and kebobs
I knew someone who participated in the Abortion Holocaust demonstrations last year. He even got arrested as they violated demonstration policies on college campuses. They were really trying to make themselves seem like they were being wrongfully expelled from college, a la Ben Stein, but all they accomplished is making themselves look silly.
The person I know was quoted as saying that the scientific community agrees that embryos are "human individuals", which is either false or trivial - like saying that the scientific community agrees that a human liver is made up of human cells. Of course, he meant it to say that scientists agree that embryos are persons, which is false.
There's also an annoying car out in our apartment parking lot that says "Abortion Holocaust" on a bumper sticker. They don't know the first thing about atrocities. I could argue just as easily that eating animals is a holocaust, too.
@#32: Well said. I hadn't thought of it like that before, but you make a good point.
Bill Dauphin@32 "I don't think most abortion foes really believe abortion is murder. If they did, none of them would support rape-or-incest exceptions"
Correct. What they really want to do is punish girls(1) for having sex. They can't stand the thought of a female not being punished for it. But when they think of rape or child incest, they feel pity for the real target of their policies, and typically allow these exceptions.
(1) I know many of them are women, but that's not how these folks think of them.
If you can't control your women by keeping them pregnant a barefoot for their entire adult lives they might go out, get a job, and find out they don't need your fat god fearing ass and run off with some godless atheist tri-athlete. Because you know distance athletes have stamina and six-packs. Then you will be on your own, having to do your own cooking cleaning and washing and that is just un-christian, Jesus never washed socks.
SC@23 "bums, tramps, and hobos
While there's a lot of geographical diversity among the commenters here, it's always refreshing to hear voices from other eras. I wish you folks from the 1920s would visit more often. :) "
I love time traveling; the future is definitely the cat's meow! Unfortunately, it's one way only, and I have to get older to do it.
Hmm, wouldn't abstinence be mass genocide? Should we teach genocide in public schools? Shouldn't George Bush be asking, "Is our children abstaining?"
They want to perform abortions with a pole? I'd vote against that. Maybe I misread the article...I need coffee.
72% No - 28% yes
Backpacker@50 "Then you will be on your own, having to do your own cooking cleaning and washing and that is just un-christian, Jesus never washed socks."
Not just un-Christian but ungodly. I had a Muslim, Iranian roommate in the 70s and I got up one morning and there was an enthusiastic line of ants running across our kitchen to the pork chop bone(1) on the floor. "Manouch - you're feeding the ants now?" He shrugged and replied that he missed the trash can. "Umm... you didn't pick it up?"
He looked at me strangely - "That's women's work."
(1) The irony of his eating pork did not escape me. But he did maintain *some standards, such as division of labor. And no, no women lived with us, servile or otherwise.
As an atheist, and I'm sure I speak only for myself, killing the unborn - and we all know that a blastocyst is totally equal to a living person - is wrong in that we atheists do not get to eat them. We love eating babies.
You'll have to fight off the fatties for them - we need them for our baby-flavored donuts. Of course, the two groups may overlap.
I was a little annoyed that the poll only provided percentages, no raw numbers about how many people had answered.
"Goddamnit I hate people like that. NO! IT'S NOT GENOCIDE! Fuck off!"
What she said.
And er, what exactly is the difference between bums, tramps, and hobos?
CaptainDan, why, it must be the insidious, horrific influence of . . .
THE CLITORIS
. . . driving otherwise moral women to actually enjoy screwing, to purchase "back massagers", and to have opinions - ON THE INTERNET!
I mean, who can fault him?
Kermitf: My "non-affiliated" (long story) wife and I went to a REALLY conservative christian wedding over the weekend (also long story) and the "division of labor" thing was a part of the wedding prayer. Something like "God find him a good job so he can support his new family and help her keep a good home and have a fruitful whom so they can have many children to be lights in this dark, dark world." I wanted to get up in front and tell them they where all stupid and where talking to themselves! Not to mention the fact that a really intelligent, sharp young woman was selling herself into servitude. It still makes my head want to explode.
Rey Fox:
A hobo is a migratory worker. A tramp is a migratory non-worker. A bum is a non-migratory non-worker.
Or so they say.
The female body is genocide. Just think of all of those murdered embryos that never were allowed to attach themselves to the uterine walls. Murder comes as easily to the female body as breathing. No wonder the woman is the devil's gateway.
'Snark level is ready to explode!'
Holbach@22 "Another religious poll to prove that life is sacred. Life is not sacred; the Universe has never deigned it to be."
One could easily make the argument that we sinful humans treat life far more sacredly than the universe (and therefore any intelligent designer behind the universe) does.
We prevent, and sometimes abort, unwanted life. We try to cure infertility and identify/minimize the factors involved in miscarriage, all because, unlike the universe, we don't just care about life, we care about quality of life.
It's not genocide if God orders you to kill them, according to the perverse rationalizations given by fundamentalists. Kill all the Canaanite baby boys, but remember that the 12-year old virgin girls are yours for the raping! It's not pedophilia--it's divinely ordained slavery!
And keep in mind that perhaps 2/3 of all embryonic "babies" fail to be born because of some flaw in intelligent design. Billions of individuals in heaven with no memories of anything.
@#47: "human individuals"
...Well, if they are I'm sure I can just fork it out of my uterus and let it be a good ol' individual!
Hmmm... to connect this conversation with today's other hot thread, I wonder why clit was omitted from Carlin's Seven Words. Perhaps because, at the time, pretty much nobody other than the authors of Our Bodies, Our Selves acknowledged its existence?
Ahh, the Hitachi Magic Opinion Stimulator™, eh? ;^)
I think George Carlin put it best:
"How come that when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omlet?"
Unholy crap, Batman!
I voted the "No, thank you" ticket an this is the result.
Yes I would. 38% 415 votes
No, thank you. 61% 666 votes <--- :-o
Oh noes? Oh yeah!!
huzzah bitches!
Indeed! Though you may think, with your weird, sciency knowledge, that opinions arise from the brain, any smart person of faith can tell you that, in fact, the trapezius and rhomboids are the main opinion-forming centres of the body.
75% No, 25% Yes.
@ Paul W: Best summation I've ever seen of the hobo/tramp/bum thing.
Does that mean that the owner is for or against it?
I just voted at the SC "I believe" license plate poll, I think the satanic intentions of the non-believers are perfectly shown by the result that popped up after I voted:
Would you buy an "I Believe" car license plate?
Thanks for your vote.
Yes I would. 38% 415 votes
No, thank you. 61% 666 votes
1081 total votes
Jason @ 64 Right off, you lead with a religious premise,"we sinful humans" There is no imaginary designer behind the universe. Without the universe, we would not be here to compose an imaginary god or gods. Do animals engage in abortion and then worry about the rationalism or effects of something they obviously never consider on a higher plain of thought? If life was sacred, then life would not be lost to natural catastrophes, human murder, disease. The universe knows nothing of this, and is unable to care or dwell on it. The universe is the cause of all your thoughts, whether they be rational, irrational or indifferent.
So lemme get this straight: we live in a world where huge numbers of people (including children) are systematically slaughtered for their nationality, ethnicity, race or religious beliefs (not to mention subtler types of lethal violations of human rights), and these fecal stains on the bloomers of humanity see fit to redefine genocide for their own self-centered religious purpose?!
Send the fuckers to Burma with signs around their necks saying, "Hello, I'm a member of the Karen minority", and let's see how eager they are to redefine genocide.
Fucking wads of gum on the underside of the table that is human decency.
"Abortion Holocaust" would be a great band name.
Paul W: Thanks. :)
@#45: Well, when it comes to being sick motherfuckers, baptists are pretty good.
Examples:
Example #1.
Milder example #2
Paul W @ 62 You "said" it correctly.
"Abortion Holocaust" would be a great band name.
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
Well, there is a band called Dayglo Abortions.
@73: Drat!
Seems they've stopped counting. My result was the same...
<impersonate voice="Adam West">
...and...yet...how...appropriate...
</impersonate voice="Adam West">
:-D
Michele @ 78 It did not take.
Another poll to crash, er, opine upon...
Zachery - I'm not sure it's a chicken abortion unless you have a rooster to flop your chooks.
Being a scientist, perhaps PZ can set us straight.
First off
Yes 24%
No 76%
After my no vote.
Second, I wonder if anyone here has any knowledge or can find out the answer to this question: Back in the 80s when I was cataloging a toxicology collection for a specialized science library I encountered several research reports (one from the NTIS) which described "Spontaneous Direct Abortions" in the United States. Put most simply, these are miscarriages induces by human-made pollutants in the environment. The last time I tried to find out anything about this the only government report I could find stated that no studies since the 1980s indicate that this is still happening (the report in question was not itself such a study). But then I could not find any government scientific reports examining this phenomenon published since the 80s. So, if you do not perform any research on a phenomenon then that means it's not happening?!
I am guessing that I have missed something somehow. Have I just missed something somehow? If anyone has time to find out, great. Otherwise, no big deal. I'm just curious.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-faith24-2008jun24,0,1417534.sto…
Another poll to crash..."92% of Americans Believe in god or a universal spirit".
Naked Bunny With A Whip @ #76:
Forget that, "Naked Bunny With A Whip" is a much better band name! Can't wait to see the videos. :P
DominEditrix @ 83 Voted negative down the line. Of course 92% are illogical; we know that. Being in the majority does not make them sane,er, right.
Steven:
The more sensitive pregnancy tests available in the last decade or so showed the following:
1 pregnancy in 8 starts out twins, one delivery in 100 is twins
3 pregnancies in 4 do not go full term and most of those three spontaneously abort in the first two months.
Pregnancy tests are commonly used to make sure that pregnant women are not x rayed casually nor given drugs that could have an adverse effect on an early pregnancy. My source for this is my ex who worked at a maternity hospital in upstate NY. I also used to be business manager of a mental health clinic with a specialist in fertility issues, she confirmed these numbers. A Discovery channel program on twins went into the twins issue a few years back. Another source of this kind of information is fertility doctors.
As for why, well no one really knows. Research on aborted fetuses is not allowed, last I knew. A Tue Beleiver will tell you that the baby wasnt meant to live and thats why it didnt go full term. Not much comfort to the infertile, and really rather careless of god if you ask me.
Rey Fox@58 "And er, what exactly is the difference between bums, tramps, and hobos?"
Hobos are often just unemployed, or perhaps happy with being unencumbered. They will work for food or a few dollars. Bums won't work (like a bum knee doesn't work). Tramps will whack you upside the ear and take your wallet if you don't keep your eye on 'em. They do look alike, which is inconvenient.
Alex @ #20:
killing the unborn ... is wrong in that we atheists do not get to eat them.
Have you seen the 2004 Hong Kong film Gaau Ji (Dumplings)?
This thread needs more Bai Ling.
Aegis @ 86 My comment at # 88 in case you passed it!
Certainly not! Abortion ought to be the result of an individual's choice exercised against her own body, and typically does not end her ability to reproduce later. Genocide is the result of official government policy against a whole population, with the specific intent of permanently ending their ability to reproduce. (Forced abortion, of course, could be used as a tool to achieve genocide.)
The right to an abortion, like the right to keep and bear arms, flows from our right and responsibility to govern our actions by our own consciences. When we abdicate that right to the government, to "the village", we enslave and degrade ourselves.
I've just put up a long delayed post comparing the right to an abortion with the right to keep and bear arms.
Since abortion has been allowed people seem very hard hearted and take less responsibility then before. I really don't like many peoples vibration any more and people seem so insecure and not trusting. Everything seems surfice.
Voted.
What really angers me about the christians is the shameless hypocrisy they make such a show of on abortion, but then they do so little about molesting priests, needless war, and the treatment of the old. That charming example of the mormons in Texas makes me wish there were a few MORE abortions.
Evidence for this? Or is it just how you 'feel'?
Vibration?! Don't be stupid; the real measure of a person is their specific gravity, lustre, and whether or not they triboluminesce.
Too true. Everything also seems much more polonial, rickerty, and farsentoothinite, wouldn't you agree?
Doris Tracey, do you have any particular point? Any evidence? Can you show that abortion is causing hard-heartedness and less responsibility, and that it wasn't the Cold War that caused it? Maybe it was the rise of the Evangelical Movement? Lying for Jesus is hard-hearted. It also means not taking responsibility for you actions, if you do them in the name of Jesus. Please show there has even been an effect, then show a causal mechanism.
*headdesk*
How many times do I have to say this...
This country (the USA) has been going to heck in a bewheeled laundry basket ever since "under God" was wedged into the Pledge by a Presbyterian minister with the consent of the Eisenhower administration.
I really don't like many peoples vibration any more - Doris Tracey
Stop vibrating them then!
Doris Tracey, @94
Wrong. Just wrong.
"Since abortion has been allowed people seem very hard hearted and take less responsibility then before."
Established a control group? What are your baseline measurements? I know it's tricky to operationally define "hard hearted"; di you go with the cardio-Moh scale, or a CaCO3 equivalence test by titration?
"I really don't like many peoples vibration "
Yeah, those darned vibrating peoples. I use a little heterodyne to shift their vibrations to a more pleasing frequency though, it works for me.
"Everything seems surfice."
I had trouble figuring this out, I'm not an expert in the field. Is this a technical term for snowboarding?
Doris at #94, just go lie down with a damp cloth over your eyes until it passes. Waking up is painful, but it is worth the effort.
Ciao
Since abortion has been allowed people seem very hard hearted and take less responsibility then before.
Because people were just so tender and caring when abortions were outlawed.
I paused for a moment to reflect on the whole of humanity, to see if there were truly a point at which an abortion should not be performed.
From conception to old age, I couldn't think of a reason.
I had to conclude that we're doing the little globs of cells a favor.
[if you can't hear the tongue in cheek from there, sorry]
Surfice:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=surfice
basically a synonym of farsentoothinite.
@Doris: Back in the days where abortion was forbidden, if you had a child out of marriage you were bringing shame on your family and yourself. You had to hide yourself and give birth in secrecy.
Were those dutiful days better for you?
In other happy news for pro-life people, abortions will soon stop being a worry since children will soon have better means to enjoy their funzones! Behold the freeware Wiibrator software will take care of that part of their social lives too!
http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26449595
...Oh wait, you guys hate masturbation too, right?
Doris is just one of those that thinks just because abortions are legal every woman in America is suddenly going out, fucking 20 dudes a weekend, getting an abortion on Monday, and resting up for the next weekend. WAKE UP!
I for one can attest to the fact that this is not taking place, because by the sheer numbers of it, I'd be getting laid every weekend... and it ain't happening sister.
... and it ain't happening sister.
For which you can blamed that damned Wii.
I <3 my Wii!!!!! And she <3s me back dammit!
Doris would never have used the word unless she was cooler and more intelligent than the rest of us:
Snippet of defintion of surfice:
"Useage limited to those combining coolness and intelligence."
This seems as good a time as any to revisit "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion: When the Anti-Choice Choose", by Joyce Arthur.
These are my favourites:
Indeed! Though you may think, with your weird, sciency knowledge, that opinions arise from the brain, any smart person of faith can tell you that, in fact, the trapezius and rhomboids are the main opinion-forming centres of the body.
and in a fundamentalist's case the gluteus maximus.
Off topic, but in the Wastwater - er Freshwater case Religious News has an article, sympathetic to Swampwater, and of course, all the comments (except mine) supported a teacher pushing his religious values in public school. I'll probably get banned again, as I was after attacking their attitude on gay people
I don't think abortion counts as "genocide" even if we extend the term to the human race and not just about sub-groups of people. However, does it really make logical sense for our consideration of personhood (who we will legally protect in effect) to depend on whether the entity is still inside someone else or not? IOW, the event of birth. I just don't think so, important as control of oneself is. Just before birth, we have a creature very much like it will be just after birth. The later is considered a "person."
The hard issue is, there is a continuous change from conception to birth so can we acknowledge that in practice? Neither conception nor birth is an appropriate dividing line for granting personhood. As Bart Kosko pointed out in Fuzzy Logic, gradual change warrants gradation of treatment. It makes sense to allow birth control/abortion in early stages, and make it increasingly difficult (justification, sanctions) as pregnancy progresses. It makes sense both in terms of gradual human development, and I suppose in terms of the burden on the mother (less time to wait for it to end anyway.)
Doris, you had better hope that abortions are never outlawed in the US, because if they are, women will have no one to turn to but horrible quacks, and us slightly less horrible herb peddlers. I can think of no less than five plants growing in Oregon right now that would cause violent spontaneous abortion. Those types of abortions should never have to happen again! Any christian twit that thinks safe abortions are wrong needs to grow up. Bad vibrations my ass.
@ The Petey #112, a little closer to levator anii and coccygeus, methinks.
In these debates, I'm always reminded of Phillip Roth's "Our Gang"..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Gang_(novel)
Y: 19%
N: 81%
we're winning the war on internet polls :P
I really don't like many peoples vibration any more - Doris Tracey
Het Doris, maybe you're vibration sensing organs need karma adjusting. I can do this for you at the bargain price of $39.99. For an extra $5 I'll also realign your shakras and balance your meridien points. Alternatively you could just abandon the vibrations and read auras- I hear they're just as reliable.
Neil B,
However, does it really make logical sense for our consideration of personhood (who we will legally protect in effect) to depend on whether the entity is still inside someone else or not? IOW, the event of birth. I just don't think so, important as control of oneself is. Just before birth, we have a creature very much like it will be just after birth.
You do realize that there's no free-floating little baby in utero, right? The creature just before birth ("still inside someone else") is nothing like it will be just after birth, in that, in utero, it lacks the ability to perform the basic life functions (respiration, circulation, excretion). Effect delivery and clamp the cord and all that changes.
Well, NeilB, there is one change that occurs at birth: the baby can't kill the mother anymore (or at least for a long time).
I can't imagine why my more sociological version - "Families with Small Children, Veterans, and People with Substance-Abuse Problems" - hasn't caught on yet...
Duh, it's the plastic surgery. My favorite drag performance was a queen up on stage with bandages covering her whole face, performing Cher.
"Abortion Holocaust" would be a great band name.
My favorite record store/head shop always was the Electric Fetus.
ema #119: The creature just before birth ("still inside someone else") is nothing like it will be just after birth, in that, in utero, it lacks the ability to perform the basic life functions (respiration, circulation, excretion). Effect delivery and clamp the cord and all that changes.
respiration? It performs diaphragmatic movements and it certainly performs everything except gas exchange in the lungs.
circulation? It certainly does, except the circulation does not go through the pulmonary vessels [or not nearly as much]. The heart pumps just fine, arteries capillaries etc perform the same functions
excretion? Through most of its existence the fetus releases CO2 and nitrogen compounds that is lost through the placenta. At the end of pregnancy, the fetus shits meconium.
Now: 82% NO
Well, NeilB, there is one change that occurs at birth: the baby can't kill the mother anymore (or at least for a long time).
Didn't you ever see the movie "It's Alive!"
?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071675/
;)
(I remember that movie scared the piss outta me... when I was 10).
I defy anybody to spend a year living down near Crewton Way, Derby and not come back believing that in some cases, abortion should be made compulsory.