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CuriousLord -> RE: Abortion (10/7/2007 4:54:21 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MySweetSubmssive
It's part of a human.
I'm pushing your argument to a logical, if absurd, conclusion.
But it's not a human; my argument doesn't apply to parts of a human, since it contends that the fetus is human.
It's a neat debating tactic, if you can make it work. Let's see where it goes.
quote:
ORIGINAL: MySweetSubmssive
You said that be alive was the criteria and that a fetus and a toddler were equivalent.
Oh, no. I never stated that they were equivalent; I was contradicting the argument by a method similar to the one that you're trying to employ. You argued that they must be indepedent to matter, correct? My point was that a toddler isn't indepedent, so it's life is therefore worthless. (An absurd conclusion.)
quote:
ORIGINAL: MySweetSubmssive
These are not the same. A toddler can be taken care of by someone other than it's mother. A first trimester baby cannot exist outside of it's mother.
I'd like to point out here that, now, you're only arguing for abortion in the first trimester; the argument stands for the majority, or the middle and end of a pregnancy, despite this.
If an injured man can't live without extensive medical devices hooked to him, but he'll eventually pull through and be able to make it on his own, is his life moot? Could you kill him then and be done with it?
quote:
ORIGINAL: MySweetSubmssive
A toddler is human, but a first trimester baby is ... I agree that it is alive, but I don't believe that human applies yet.
With human DNA and the obviousness that it will become something that we can all agree is human without being interefered with (i.e., a coat hanger gouging it apart), I'd ask you better define why you see it as non-human for this assumption to work.
quote:
ORIGINAL: MySweetSubmssive
I don't believe that humanity is present just because a sperm and an egg have come together. I don't know where I believe the line to be, but ... again ... there are distinctions between a fetus and a viable, independently functioning person.
I'd suggest an existential approach. If you were frozen, at this point in time- your body now inanimate, never to move again, would you be human? To me, I'd say no. We're not the active formation, but the potential for it. In the same way, I'd argue that one in a temporary coma is also alive.
At some point, we must recongize that "alive" isn't black and white. I'll give you that a fetus may not be as alive as you nor I; regardless, must one not concede that it carries the same potential for life that we define as being alive? Is it not a self-working system that can sustain itself in an appropriate environment? Granted, it's quite young and fragile, and exactly what this environment is far more constrained than what it could be for an adult, though we also have quite extraordinary requirements of our environment (being a large reason humans are found nearly exclusively on Earth, to the best of our knowledge).
quote:
ORIGINAL: MySweetSubmssive
If you truly believed that anything after conception was a human, you would be mourning continuously, as one third of abortions end in miscarriage, most before a woman even knows she is pregnant.
I also know that children constantly starve to death in Africa. I'm used to the lives being lost, even if I don't welcome it. It's my hope that future society, almost certainly with the help of greater technology, will be able to fix much of this. Still, we accept life, or try to; for me, it's those shots at making it better that contribute greatly to the value of living.
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