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DesideriScuri -> RE: Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (2/9/2016 5:55:23 PM)
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ORIGINAL: bounty44
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
I get what you're saying with your example. But, the law, currently, says that after 22 weeks, abortions are illegal, except in certain circumstances.
You have taken the stance that it's "murder all along the way." So, a woman who has sex where the condom breaks and the ovum is fertilized, can not, under any circumstances, terminate the pregnancy? RU-486 will cause her to not let it implant. If it never implants and is aborted that way, is that still murder? I mean, it's a clump of cells, for the first few days. It's not even termed a fetus for the first 8-9 weeks. At no point in that time, is it not murder to abort the pregnancy?
How do you define life? What differentiates human life from other wildlife? What makes it okay for us to hunt other forms of life for food? Is that not murder, if you're just looking at "life?" Is it murder when you destroy a cancerous tumor? What makes a cancerous tumor different from a newly fertilized ovum?
Government's main purpose is to protect the human rights of those it governs. Does a fertilized ovum automatically gain human rights as soon as it's fertilized?
yes current law in most places after 22 weeks requires a "health endangerment"---which is interpreted in the most loosely way possible so as to render it meaningless and to allow the woman to have the abortion. I don't know why/how that distinction matters though.
I read one article that spoke to the life endangerment exemption, but it said that the state (one of the Dakotas) defined it so strictly, that it was all but impossible to qualify for the exemption.
I couldn't find anything that was really definitive about the requirements. I'm going to need proof before I accept they are interpreted very loosely.
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breaking condoms do not change the essential nature of the abortion act, which the killing of an innocent life. im not thinking of "murder" in the legal system way, but rather, a moral one.
It does make a difference in whether or not the two partners intended to make a baby or not.
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the progression goes roughly from zygote, to embryo, to fetus (baby in the womb), to infant, to toddler, to pre-adolescent, to adolescent, to adult...I don't see how the name, which only merely designates stage of development, matters.
Is it murder at every stage of development?
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if you have a judeo-christian worldview, after the flood, god gave mankind permission to eat meat. if you have a evolutionary worldview, there is no moral prohibition whatsoever.
in either regard, its extraneous to the argument, unless you can philosophically equate a baby in the womb to a chicken.
It doesn't have to be a chicken, or anything else. Life is life, isn't it?
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a tumor has live cells in it, but it does not have "life" any more than a kidney does by itself. from a theological perspective, what distinguishes human "life" from plant or cell life, is the presence of a soul or spirit.
When does the soul enter the fertilized ovum?
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if you want a secular view---lots to read here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life/ but with some insight into the difficulty of the question:
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The laws of chemistry and physics just were not robust enough to account for biology. “It is life we are studying in biology, and not phenomena which can be represented by causal conceptions of physics and chemistry” Haldane 1931, p. 28).
Indeed, “no problem of philosophy is more fundamental than the nature of life”
Woodger urged abandoning the use of the word ‘life’ in scientific discourse on the grounds that ‘living organism’ was what had to be explained. He saw the question of how life arose as being outside science.
[here's part of the conclusion after a long series of reading]
Our increased understanding of the physical-chemical basis of living systems has increased enormously over the past century and it is possible to give a plausible definition of life in these terms. “Living organisms are autopoietic systems: self-constructing, self-maintaining, energy-transducing autocatalytic entities” in which information needed to construct the next generation of organisms is stabilized in nucleic acids that replicate within the context of whole cells and work with other developmental resources during the life-cycles of organisms, but they are also “systems capable of evolving by variation and natural selection: self-reproducing entities, whose forms and functions are adapted to their environment and reflect the composition and history of an ecosystem” (Harold 2001, 232).
ive quoted elsewhere geneticists, molecular biologists, etc (however we want to define "life) as saying that "life begins at conception." here are some again, predominantly from embryology texts:
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“In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.”
“It is the penetration of the ovum by a sperm and the resulting mingling of nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the initiation of the life of a new individual.”
“The zygote is human life….there is one fact that no one can deny; Human beings begin at conception.”
“The zygote and early embryo are living human organisms.”
“….it is scientifically correct to say that human life begins at conception.” [ironically this one comes from the dept of health and human services]
“A zygote (a single fertilized egg cell) represents the onset of pregnancy and the genesis of new life.”
http://www.lifenews.com/2015/01/08/41-quotes-from-medical-textbooks-prove-human-life-begins-at-conception/
Using a pro-life source for "proof" that life begins at conception is sketchy.
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and I would say yes to your question about government and its citizens---and then turn the question around, how is the baby not a citizen such that it isn't deserved of the government's protection at all levels/stages of its development?
It's not a baby until it's born, but, before it's born, I don't think it has full human rights starting at conception. The baby doesn't have a formed heart until around 9 weeks, and the brain isn't really formed until week 6 or 7. I have a hard time accepting that that should be considered "life," or that that fetus has human rights.
If a woman is pregnant, and doesn't know it, and engages in behaviors or actions that induce a miscarriage, is that woman guilty of negligent homicide?
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