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1. The defining characteristic of a person is sapience. You need thought. You need self awareness. And to get those things you need a functioning brain. Since there is no coherent brain activity in early fetal development until AT LEAST 22 weeks we are most certainly not dealing with anything we could meaingfully call a person prior to that time. And since something like 97% of all abortions occur in that window and any occuring after it are almost always for reasons of medical necessity that alone should end this discussion.
2. EVEN IF we insisted on calling a fetus a person before then. Hell, even if we called it a person from the second it was conceived even though calling a few undifferentiated cells a "person" is insane... that still wouldn't be an arument for outlawing abortion since that requires declaring that the mother has no legal right to control over her own body. That it is superceded by another "person's" right to use her body for their own preservation. That is not a right that exists in our society. That right is possessed by NOBODY, and for good reason. I sure as hell cannot commandeer your body against your will to preseve my life. Nobody can walk up to you and force you to have surgery to give up a peice of your liver or some bone marrow because I need it to survive and my "right to life" trumps your right to have final say on what happens to your body.
If we do that we define people as community property. Which is what outlawing abortion based on arguments that the mother doesnt have the right to say if her body gets used to carry a child to term would be doing. It's despicable.
There is no justification fr outlawing abortion. Regulating it, yes. Placing reaosnable restrictions on late-term occurances, yes. Outlawing? Absolutely not. It must be legal.
1. that thing inside you is not a virus. It has the potential to grow into an adult human which is very precious. Oh, and it has a heartbeat at 5 weeks. So there are millions of babies killed with a heartbeat every year. how sad
2. I don't want to control your body. Rather i want to protect the growing human inside of you.
When does life start? That is the question. This debate will be over in a matter of minutes if someone came up with the answer right now.
Evangelists would believe it starts at contraception while scientists debate that it is more accurately the development of the brain which is the seventh week of development.
Of course any right minded person wouldn't put the science of birth in the hands of someone with no scientific expertise so it is generally accepted that the 7th is the week that a clump of cells turn into human.
However how can any scientist or evangelist understand when a child gains a soul as the question is purely philosophical?
The soul has been deemed integral or essential to consciousness, personality and every free thinking person has a soul which defines his existence as a human being rather than an imamate object.
Plato says that a soul is a combination of various aspects. Mind, reason, emotion, appetite and desire. These characteristics define a soul. According to Platoan philosophy, if you were void of one of these aspects you are without soul.
-An unborn child has a mind which allows it to make functional processes in its body but is not capable of and thought. Thought encompasses things such as imagination, ideas and reflection. A lot of people say dreams are proof of an unborn child’s thought but dreams don’t count because they are instinctive of a human slumber. It forces the brain to stay asleep as an inactive brain causes your brain to disable processing information from nervous system and other systems. This could ultimately cause you to loose consciousness all together so an automatic reaction is to wake up, it’s like a screensaver.
-An unborn child has no reason; it has no choices to create over itself. No study has shown that an unborn child has ever been able to conduct its own decisions rather than its own instinctive actions.
-It has no emotion, no joy, sadness or pity. (For all your religious nuts out there, pain is not an emotion)
-Appetite is only created through its instinct to survive, I suppose it counts.
-Unborn children have no desire. They do not want anything but their instinct to, live, eat, and kick stomach every now and then. There is no aspiration or defining motive.
If anyone has any counters against these points I would like to hear what you have to say. However I do believe this is an erudite explanation of the creation of ones consciousness from a philosophical standpoint. When an unborn child gains all these aspects it moves from inanimate object to living, breathing, free-thinking human being.
"Life" please specify what you mean by the word "life". technically a fetus is indeed alive, a zygote is alive.
Souls as supernatural things do not exist, or if you would prefer the less strong statement are not falsifiable or observable.
Free will does not exist, it is non-sensical and thus to say a unborn child has never conducted its own decisions only instinctive actions is to say it has done only what any of us can do.
Before conception, during it, after it etc Life never wasn't during a "successful pregnancy". 2 haploids of two different beings came together, forming a third being. keep in mind a being is distinct from person.
""Life" please specify what you mean by the word "life".
Sorry what I was referring to was sapience
"Souls as supernatural things do not exist, or if you would prefer the less strong statement are not falsifiable or observable."
What I am trying to get across is that soul is a concept. It’s symbolic of sapience. The concept of soul is key to the philosophical and religious debate about unborn children.
"Free will does not exist, it is non-sensical and thus to say a unborn child has never conducted its own decisions only instinctive actions is to say it has done only what any of us can do."
I was not talking about free will; I am talking about free thought. Free will is the decision to create your own perspective. Free thought defines ones ability to influence its own mindset, create decisions that are not based on instinctual behaviour.
That argument just goes out the window because I did not once mention free-will which is a different concept. The exact phrase I used was “free thinking”.
I feel as if you’re dancing around the concept a bit. I said an unborn baby can’t make any decisions at all, it is completely imamate. Just like a rock, a twig, a leaf, they make no decisions and are only influenced by nature. Yet you’re carrying on about our own free-will.
Yes free-will in the form we know it is an illusion. Our world is only moving in one direction and there is hardly any relativity. However you defeat yourself by saying that statement at all, you deny your own spiritual existence. If you had no free will you would not have wrote that sentence in the first place.
Free-will has no black and white definition. Because if free-will existed I would to be able to do whatever I wanted when I wanted with no consequences but I am restricted to living the life I was giving because of the circumstances of this world. However what you must understand is that free-will is the foundation of our sapience. Without it we are inanimate beings. A mere shell with no occupant.
Most people against abortion are religious fanatics which is why this kind of discussion is appropriate. But you clearly are not. What are you? Are you pro-choice or pro-life or what. It feels like you are dancing between the two.
You made a discussion about sapience and then made a double standard about me not having proof of the existence of a soul?
Also you should debunk my other statements before falsifying my entire arguments in a few short paragraphs.
Free thinking and free will are synonyms to me; as is perspective and mindset. mindset can be seen as a perspective with a positive feedback loop.
The mind is a beautiful thing full of feedback loops and self modifying. It is bounded by its original state and its environment. If all one starts with in life is instinctual behavior then there is a chain of reaction in all their "decisions" which amount to them being based on instinctual behavior. I can write some javascript code which is selfmodifying in such a way which changes how it modifys itself based off of previous modifcations. The exact way to do this would take some time though. currently i'm working on a automatic logical analysis of statements to access their validity; which means i'm looking at their structure and seeing if there are any possible ways the premises could all be true and the conclusion false. I won't have much time to work on either one till summer though which is a roughly a month away. a self-modifying function which changes how it modifies based on previous modifications sounds like a challenge but i know its possible for programs have been evolved and not made before in other languages and thats essentially what i would be doing. i might work some on it but it won't be a high priority project. matter of fact i just found this site yesterday and i need to spend less time on it. I'm in love with argumentation, call it my addiction. i went on a tangent back to the different points.
My spiritual existence is only valid under determinism. This may require more explaining but might be best made a separate debate.
consciousness is an emergent property of a electro-chemical machine, it is the same as the polarity of water.
freewill and freethought both suggest that a human being can be a first cause that their decisions are neither random nor determined. A human being is not a god. Although god is an ambiguous word and in one sense i can say that, and in another sense i can say i am my own god. Perhaps god is a word which should be avoided in debate due to its ambiguity.
Abortion constitutes many other debates, it is a debate which rests upon many other debates. I have unique viewpoints upon those debates and i find most other people to be inconsistent when it comes towards abortion, on either side. I'm making a debate to see what the smaller issues are that might be debated best separately.
I find some of these points shocking and sad. For instance, you minimize-no trivialize- the unborn human's instinct to live, eat survive. This is the very beginning of human life for god-sakes! It is not what is physically there in the womb which is at issue. Rather, it is the fact that this living thing inside the mother has input within it the POTENTIAL to grow. It is this instinct to develop, this fight to survive, to perpetuate itself which is beautiful and precious!! The potential is the important thing which is rare and precious, because one day you and I will both be dust with no more potential. So let's not let young ladies end it because it's hard to raise children and because it takes work.
"It is not what is physically there in the womb which is at issue. Rather, it is the fact that this living thing inside the mother has input within it the POTENTIAL to grow"
You forget that denying its life is not a precursor for murder. The whole concept is weather its ethical to deny someones potential to exist before that unborn being has a choice of its own.
However the belief resides in the fact that if that unborn being never comes into existence in the first place, it cant make a choice nonetheless hence it is fallacious to ask weather its ethical to steal the right of a non-existing, un-spiritual and inamite being as rights are exclusivly to the living, not the living of the future.
" It is this instinct to develop, this fight to survive, to perpetuate itself which is beautiful and precious"
1. It's not a person. Abortion to me is no different than jizzing in a rag, sure there is potential that those cells could have made a person, but they aren't now and that they never will shouldn't bother anyone in the least.
2. Given that there is 0 proof that the cluster of cells has any type of self-awareness, a preponderance of proof that the cluster of cells doesn't have self-awareness, then it is the case of a person doing something to their own body. People should be allowed to do whatever they like with there own body.
3. Even if abortion were illegal, there is evidence that illegality has never stopped women from getting an abortion if they want one. Making it illegal would not save these imaginary people anyway, but it would kill scores of women who decide to get an abortion in a dirty basement instead of a clean hospital.
Who are any of you to decide what is right for a pregnant woman? When a woman has been raped and impregnated she doesn't deserve to have the choice?
So in this wonderland were abortion is illegal ... is it that great? We would have children being born into homes where they are unwanted, women aborting themselves through god-awful ways, or adoption homes are flooded with unwanted children. Sound like a perfect world to you? It doesn't to me.
The distinction is important. A fetus is human. A fetus is not a human. Just like my liver is human (it's certainly not canine for example)... but it is not a human.
That my liver is not a human? That there is a difference between calling something "human" and calling something "a human"? If you would care to clarify what exactly your concern is it would make it easier to address it.
What makes a human a human? What makes you think that your definition is accurate?
A human can think, has some level of autonomy, and generally is able to survive on its own. Human is the biology, the culture, the history, shared by us all.
A foetus in its early weeks cannot think, cannot take care of itself at all, can't make choices. Why would you impose upon women the inability to remove foetuses that aren't individuals?
It moves and has to be provided with nourishment and protection from the mothers womb. So it is not human? How is it not living? Thats like saying a fetus of a dog will not become a dog. Seriously? Please explain..... I really want to know your ideas. I think every woman and anyone that's for abortions, that has a voluntary abortion should have every reproduction organ removed from their body . My Aunt cannot have children and she wants one more than anything and some women are throwing them away like they were the fetus's are trash. Why won't they just have the baby and give it to someone like my aunt.
It moves and has to be provided with nourishment and protection from the mothers womb. So it is not human? How is it not living? Thats like saying a fetus of a dog will not become a dog. Seriously? Please explain..... I really want to know your ideas. I think every woman and anyone that's for abortions, that has a voluntary abortion should have every reproduction organ removed from their body . My Aunt cannot have children and she wants one more than anything and some women are throwing them away like they were the fetus's are trash. Why won't they just have the baby and give it to someone like my aunt.
Do you realise that most abortions (over ninety percent) occur before the foetus even has brain tissue? Think about that for a moment. Everything that makes us what we are comes from our brain, but what's aborted in the vast majority of cases has NO brain. In many cases what's aborted is a microscopic bit of cells. This isn't the same as killing infants or babies, so you need to learn more about it and divorce yourself from that mindset.
its still taking nourishment from the mother, it still moves. I am a mom, do you know how i would feel now(after holding her) if i would've taken the alternative route?
its still taking nourishment from the mother, it still moves. I am a mom, do you know how i would feel now(after holding her) if i would've taken the alternative route?
If its taking nourishment from its mother, it's not quite a human being yet. If it has a brain, that makes the issue more complex.
Childbirth was a decision that you took, it worked for you. You need to understand that what works for doesn't work for many women.
Even if it doesn't have a brain, my belief is that the PERSON still has a soul. The soul is what gives the PERSON LIFE The bible says once you are conceived the chosen PERSON has a given soul that the Lord has chose for you. Please do not argue with my spiritual beliefs, i have chose to believe in God and the law protects that.
Even if it doesn't have a brain, my belief is that the PERSON still has a soul. The soul is what gives the PERSON LIFE The bible says once you are conceived the chosen PERSON has a given soul that the Lord has chose for you. Please do not argue with my spiritual beliefs, i have chose to believe in God and the law protects that.
I'm going to give you a pearl of wisdom. When you are debating, you automatically forego the right to back your position with religious beliefs, or spiritual beliefs; in other words you agree to reason your position with logic, rationality and evidence. Emotional pleas can be used but they should never serve as the core of your position, because emotional pleas are subjective and go the way the wind blows. Even in a theological debate, one must back their position with orthodox texts.
I am a strictly rational individual, and what you said to me by invoking god is that you have a belief but cannot support it with evidence or reason. If I were cruel I would mock that as being a weak position to take, but I think you should be shown why your position is not a good one to take in a debate.
Sure the law protects you to have your own beliefs, but what gives you the right to force your beliefs on others? What if others hold different beliefs, should they still be influenced by your religious decisions? How about if it was the other way around and you were legally forbidden from doing ceratin things because someone of a different faith beleived that their god thought it was wrong?
No one is saying you don't have a right to your opinion, but if you don't want your views challenged, don't come on a debate website.
[sarcasm] yes sex just happens... [/sarc]. technically you chose to do what pregnancy necessitates which is either IV or sex. there is the case of rape in which case it obviously wasn't your choice. although sex does not necessitate pregnancy.At the very least you choose motherhood as a possibility unless your ignorant and think the stork brings babies to you or thought there was no margin of error to be accounted for in protection. [bold] Pregnancy or anything has a chain of causation, nothing just happens.[/bold] you choose to risk motherhood at the very least, even if it is a very low risk with modern contraceptives.
it is a human being, its not a human person. these concepts are distinct, or at least need to be.
I use the definition that it is human as an egg, zygote, and foetus until it is between 14 and 20 weeks old. At that point it is an open question whether it can be described as a person, or a human. Before then, it is tissue without a necessary nervous system.
1. Funguses, viruses, bacteria, etc all also take nourishment from mothers (and all humans) so nourishment is a non-point.
2. Just because your a mom doesn't mean you know the feelings of every other mom or would be mom in the world. I know plenty of women who have had abortions and are fine with it. Obviously if you are thinking of abortion as killing a little kid you are going to be against it.
But lets say there are women who consider that thing growing in them for the first 3 months nothing more than a cluster of cells? I mean, there is no evidence otherwise. You may believe there is some magic daddy in the sky giving this thing a soul, but she disagrees with you on that and you have no proof otherwise.
She is not forcing you to have abortions. Why should you be allowed to force her not to?
Currently most insurance companies cover reproductive services, chances are the insurance you have now either through your parents or employer provides reproductive services that includes abortion. But it isn't taken from your taxes, you or your parents or your employer is now paying for abortions.
The new laws are the same thing it looks like. Women can choose to get reproductive services, the money is pooled as is the case with all insurance, and that may be one of the services covered. However, it is only covered if one pays into the system - they are paying for it.
It's the status quo, and the abortion subject was only brought up to rile up the misinformed. What Republicans and some Democrats tried to slip into the new legislation was basically a ban on all abortion. They tried to use the bill as an excuse to make it harder for poor people to get abortions. That's all it was.
The fact remains though, that even if that were to happen, if they were able to make it harder for poor people to get abortions, it just means women getting the procedure in other ways that are often dangerous. Never in history has making abortion illegal, or even more expensive, stopped abortion.
You should be happy though. Now you get to stay on your parent's plan for a few more years if you are in a situation where you do not have an employer who provides insurance.
And if your child goes to college someday, they will be able to stay on your policy while in school all the way till age 27 I believe... maybe 26.
On top of that, it will be less expensive as soon as the millions of self-employed who aren't sick but still can't afford a private plan will be paying into the system.
Unless you're single with no kids and make over 100k a year, or have kids and two incomes and make over 200k a year, you are getting a great deal with this bill.
“It moves and has to be provided with nourishment and protection from the mothers womb. So it is not human? How is it not living?”
Anyone who bluntly says an unborn child is a living thing is missing the concept. People need a wider understanding of this topic as it is of huge philosophical importance. Does an unborn baby have self-awareness/sapience/soul/spirit/intellect/free-thought?
If not, abortion is no crime
“I think every woman and anyone that's for abortions, that has a voluntary abortion should have every reproduction organ removed from their body . My Aunt cannot have children and she wants one more than anything and some women are throwing them away like they were the fetus's are trash.”
Quite a harsh statement. Seeing as the main people who need abortions are teen mothers. These people are far-worse off than any person not capable of mothering children. I am guessing your auntie is aged 30-40, middle-class. These teens are pregnant; they get ostracized, have to fight for economic dependence and may soon be forced to limit the growth of their education to take care of a child. This will ultimately lead to very poor living standards for both of them in the future. If she doesn’t get an abortion, two lives are ruined and we have another generation of dysfunctional youths consisting of crack fiends, prostitutes, pimps, gang members and robbers. Low level income will force them to poor strata’s of society.
Don’t give me some inspirational story about how some mum got out of a life of hardship and she and her son are doing fine. That’s not reality for the vast majority. I grew up in a shitty neighborhood and I would like to see the last of these dysfunctional youths off the street, back in school and focusing on their career. However we can’t just make it happen, first we have to make sure there is not going to be more of them in the future.
“Why won't they just have the baby and give it to someone like my aunt.”
is there any other human beings that are not human persons? if so then it should be legal to kill them according to a argument from sapience/personhood.
Your stating the following:
If something is not a human person, even if it is a human being then it is allowable for it to be killed.
The human person argument has problems, in that more then a fetus can be argued to lack personhood.
are you a human person after birth but before lets say you can crawl? are you a human person if your condition is one of severe down-syndrome? are you a human person if your in a coma. are you a human person when your asleep?
Abortion is not murder simply because the law allows it.
Also the distinction between a human and human is significant but should be more pronounced; "a" is easily overlooked.
Many a times, abortion helps to safeguard women's health. There are many women, who suffer from various hazardous medical conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle-cell anemia, severe diabetes, etc. As these diseases can be life-threatening, an abortion often helps to avoid serious medical complications from childbirth. But abortion should be carried out after proper medical advice as it can lead to potential miscarriages in the future.
Nearly all abortions take place in the first trimester, when a fetus cannot exist independent of the mother. As it is attached by the placenta and umbilical cord, its health is dependent on her health, and cannot be regarded as a separate entity as it cannot exist outside her womb.
The concept of personhood is different from the concept of human life. Human life occurs at conception, but fertilized eggs used for in vitro fertilization are also human lives and those not implanted are routinely thrown away. Is this murder, and if not, then how is abortion murder?
Adoption is not an alternative to abortion, because it remains the woman's choice whether or not to give her child up for adoption. Statistics show that very few women who give birth choose to give up their babies - less than 3% of white unmarried women and less than 2% of black unmarried women.
Abortion is a safe medical procedure. The vast majority of women - 88% - who have an abortion do so in their first trimester. Medical abortions have less than 0.5% risk of serious complications and do not affect a woman's health or future ability to become pregnant or give birth.
In the case of rape or incest, forcing a woman made pregnant by this violent act would cause further psychological harm to the victim. Often a woman is too afraid to speak up or is unaware she is pregnant, thus the morning after pill is ineffective in these situations.
Abortion is not used as a form of contraception. Pregnancy can occur even with responsible contraceptive use. Only 8% of women who have abortions do not use any form of birth control, and that is due more to individual carelessness than to the availability of abortion.
The ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights. Take away her reproductive choice and you step onto a slippery slope. If the government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy, what about forcing a woman to use contraception or undergo sterilization?
Taxpayer dollars are used to enable poor women to access the same medical services as rich women, and abortion is one of these services. Funding abortion is no different from funding a war in the Mideast. For those who are opposed, the place to express outrage is in the voting booth.
Teenagers who become mothers have grim prospects for the future. They are much more likely to leave of school; receive inadequate prenatal care; rely on public assistance to raise a child; develop health problems; or end up divorced.
Like any other difficult situation, abortion creates stress. Yet the American Psychological Association found that stress was greatest prior to an abortion, and that there was no evidence of post-abortion syndrome.
If someone is a strict constructionist who interprets the Constitution word for word, the sanction for abortion is given under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment of our U.S. Constitution defines a citizen “a citizen” at birth. If a woman is carrying a fetus in the womb, the U.S. Constitution does not designate the fetus as “a citizen.” It would take an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to declare a fetus a citizen. You have to be born in order to be recognized as a citizen. Therefore, a woman does have the right to choose. A fetus inside the womb is not designated as a citizen according to the U.S. Constitution so by default is not entitled to life, liberty, or prosperity. You have to be born in order to be endowed with those privileges. To conclude, neither the Federal government nor any of the States can deny a woman the right to choose.
If abortion is murder, abortion would have been terminated years ago due to the cruel and unusual punishment clause under the Eighth Amendment. Again, proof that a fetus is not recognized as a citizen of the United States of America.
Should not the philosophy behind laws and Laws themselves be consistent? If abortion is justified by the lack of sapience. Then could not the same argument be used to justify such things as dumpster babies, killing of severally mentally disabled people, people in a coma or any one who doesn't demonstrate sapience after birth, even during a temporary period like sleep? after all you will eventually demonstrate sapience when you wake up, which would be the same argument given stating that a fetus will eventually develop a brain and demonstrate sapience. well sleeping your moments are similar to the kicking a fetus may have, they are not a demonstration of sapience. The exact definition of sapience is interestingly not needed to show that a fetus doesn't have it. it simply needs to be shown that sapience requires a well enough developed brain and that a fetus lacks a developed enough one and thus lacks sapience no matter what is to be said of further defining of the concept of sapience. If the same criteria is applied towards organisms with developed brains then there are problems. Sapience is not always active, consciousness shuts down, comes in various degrees etc do these problems not amount to anything?
If someone came to me and needed one of my organs. I would not be the cause of them needing my organ. I would not be liable for their situation. A mother in the majority of causes is liable for the situation. She is undeniably creating human life(which is indeed distinct from human person) only to destroy it. combine that with the complications above and this seem to be quite muddled. So the question seems to me to be more of weather our laws and philosophies behind them should be consistent and if they are not then it is not principles but rather utility they are based on. In such a case we should just say we allow abortion because it suits us, not that it is allowed because of some philosophical system or principled decision.
You forget that denying its life is not a precurser for murder. The whole concept is weather its ethical to deny someones potential to exist before that unborn being has a choice of its own.
However the belief resides in the fact that if that unborn being never comes into existance in the first place, it cant make a choice nonetheless hence it is fallacious to ask weather its ethical to steal the right of a non-existing, un-spiritual and inamite being as rights are exclusivly to the living, not the living of the future.
Abortion is not murder. I never forgot that. I was attacking the argument from sapience not debating weather it is ethical to deny the existence of a hypothetical being. your commentary isn't relative to what i posted.
it is ethical to deny someone's or rather some human being's existence before they exist. It is ok to wear a condom. any such person being stopped from existing is just hypothetical. A fetus isnt a person, it is a human being. however just what the hell is a person? abortion gets down to questions that have been disputed for hundreds of years, and to this day don't possess satisfactory answers.
A fetus is undeniably alive by the way, it just doesn't demonstrate sapience and can not. Expanding the scope of the argument leads to problems, showing that the argument from sapience is only valid with "but", "ifs" etc which would contradict the argument. Is a baby born less then one day ago really sapient? if not, why not be able to put it in a dumpster. It does not have a choice of its own, and does not seem very "person" like. Thus it fits the criteria and people should have the ability to kill it, for it is very dependent on a care taker(s) and what right does it have to impose on anyone? This is just one of many examples.
Should not the philosophy behind laws and Laws themselves be consistent? If abortion is justified by the lack of sapience. Then could not the same argument be used to justify such things as dumpster babies, killing of severally mentally disabled people, people in a coma or any one who doesn't demonstrate sapience after birth, even during a temporary period like sleep?
Dumpster babies have a level of self-awareness, as noted by their ability to respond to stimuli, that they have a nervous system, and that they have a memory. Sleeping babies are the same.
I personally approve of euthanasia for the severely mentally handicapped, and people who are in comas long enough that their recovery is nonexistent. Provided that the mentally handicapped are violent, and/or completely unable to function.
But this is all besides the point: laws are never consistent in their philosophy.
which would be the same argument given stating that a fetus will eventually develop a brain and demonstrate sapience
We don't base laws on the potential future ramifications of a choice. This is why disposing of a used condom isn't considered abortion, for example.
The exact definition of sapience is interestingly not needed to show that a fetus doesn't have it. it simply needs to be shown that sapience requires a well enough developed brain and that a fetus lacks a developed enough one and thus lacks sapience no matter what is to be said of further defining of the concept of sapience. If the same criteria is applied towards organisms with developed brains then there are problems. Sapience is not always active, consciousness shuts down, comes in various degrees etc do these problems not amount to anything?
This is because sapience comes from the brain. If a foetus has none, it cannot be sapient. Sapience in this discussion is an umbrella word for independent thought, some level of consciousness, an ability to make decisions and so on.
We don't apply it to organisms with developed brains because those organisms are already capable of individuality. At this point, losing consciousness doesn't disqualify the individuality, unless the organism has transitioned into a state where they can not recover their consciousness, such as in a coma.
If someone came to me and needed one of my organs. I would not be the cause of them needing my organ. I would not be liable for their situation. A mother in the majority of causes is liable for the situation. She is undeniably creating human life(which is indeed distinct from human person) only to destroy it.
This is why abortion is made available. In those cases where a woman becomes pregnant, she can abort before the foetus is even a person, before it has a brain. By illegalising abortion, you remove a woman's right to abort the process that creates a human life, you force her to either have an illegal abortion, or to accept that pregnancy automatically leads to a human being born.
In such a case we should just say we allow abortion because it suits us, not that it is allowed because of some philosophical system or principled decision.
The laws allowing abortion do so because it suits the women. They don't parade themselves as some sort of philosophical and moral beacon. It's mostly pragmatic.
The future ramifications of a choice does factor in to making laws; Laws are all about that. The texting and driving laws are about the future ramifications of allowing or not allowing different groups(age based) to text and drive. The question asked is the following: Will banning it decrease crashes? the word "will" is a reference to the future.
Disposing of a used condom is disposing of your own haploids(sperm). it has nothing to do with abortion and is why its not considered abortion.
what is meant by individuality? the zygote has its own dna pattern. it is individual, unique. I have a feeling you mean something different?
the first two weeks of pregnancy your not actually pregnant according to the first article mentioned in the above, there is most certainly nothing wrong with doing something with in that time period to insure you don't become pregnant.
If the laws don't parade themselves as philosophical or moral beacons Then lets say its pragmatic and that there isn't really a justification for it other then people in control find it useful.Then theres this entire other issue of control but thats a different debate.
Laws do indeed parade themselves as philosophical and moral beacons though, common law is a perfect example. Previous court cases and the reasoning behind them can have significant impact on a case. Also the common criticism of a action as immoral is that it is illegal. This common criticism isn't a good one because legality is no substitute for morality but its there because the law is seen in culture as a beacon of what is right.
Brain development doesn't imply having a proper brain. It takes weeks before the brain resembles anything complex. IDX takes place around 16 weeks, and at that point the fetus has an actual brain.
Alright, you demonstrated some memory and stimuli response. Assuming it is partially aware of its surroundings, it is still sub-human in its cognitive functions, meaning many simple animals are more self-aware. This allows for a rational decision in favour of the mother's right over her own body.
The future ramifications of a choice does factor in to making laws; Laws are all about that. The texting and driving laws are about the future ramifications of allowing or not allowing different groups(age based) to text and drive. The question asked is the following: Will banning it decrease crashes? the word "will" is a reference to the future.
You're mistaking laws which exist to prevent accidents, using statistics to back their premises, with a law which would make an operation illegal because the present life it ends would in the future be a life.
In other words, the first types of laws are about minimising the chance of damage. Chance is the operative word. The second hypothetical law is about preventing an operating from occurring because only in the future will it have ethical problems. The distinguishing feature is that one set of laws is based on chance accident prevention, the other is based upon the rights bestowed to a person only in a hypothetical future, in other words treating a present nonentity as a future person.
Going back to my condom example, the example was reducing your argument to its extremes. A condom has sperm which if allowed to fertilise an egg will become a foetus, then a child. Wasting the condom therefore would be the same as wasting a child's life, using your reasoning.
what is meant by individuality? the zygote has its own dna pattern. it is individual, unique. I have a feeling you mean something different?
Individuality comes from the memories you have. Clones exist as part of nature, but they are still separate individuals because they experience different memories.
the first two weeks of pregnancy your not actually pregnant according to the first article mentioned in the above, there is most certainly nothing wrong with doing something with in that time period to insure you don't become pregnant.
I would argue that since we are already dealing with a known individual, the woman, who already has legal rights bestowed upon her as an individual, the decision of whose rights should prevail is fairly simple. It hasn't been established even remotely that the foetuses which are aborted in over 90% of cases are individuals.
Wasting the condom therefore would be the same as wasting a child's life, using your reasoning. That is NOT my reasoning. I have some tests coming up so i won't respond immediately perhaps this weekend I'll write something up summarizing my position. Responding and not stating may of lead to confusion. My responses have been criticisms of the argument from sapience you have been making, not a argument for or against abortion themselves. Instead of being reactive I'll be active, so far this debate has been very helpful. i think i can now put explicitly my objections but i won't have time to make sure their elegant, concise etc till the weekend. I likely won't get on this website till then, or Friday.
I do not believe that you were trying to argue that wasting sperm is the same as wasting life, however I was taking your argument about potential life to its absurd logical conclusion.
I have some tests coming up so i won't respond immediately perhaps this weekend I'll write something up summarizing my position.
I look forward to reading it.
My responses have been criticisms of the argument from sapience you have been making, not a argument for or against abortion themselves.
I made note of this, however I hope you realise, along with those making the argument, that it is an inherently grey issue.
Ok, this is my criticism of the argument for abortion from sapience:
The argument for abortion from sapience is a valid logical argument known as Barbra(or if your picky you can called it a variation of that argument) and is as follows
1.All non-(Human persons) are beings which do not have rights.
The soundness of this argument is completely dependent on the category of non-(human persons) which is dependent on the category of person.
This category is ill defined to start with but there are a few things that seems to be commonly agreed on:
1.A human person is a human being
2.A human person is a human being with the quality of personhood.
This forces us to look into personhood, so lets look into it:
1.Personhood is dependent on the brain,
A. How developed of a brain?
I. How is this decision decided or development measured? Likely by what functions the brain can accomplish, then the importance of those functions would have to be supported.
II. If the functions of the brain is what decides how developed of a brain then there is two options of approach which are as follows:
AA. The brain needs to demonstrate these functions:
A lot of brain functions will not always be demonstrated, and some will be timed based for even adults. Thus personhood, and rights become transient. Rights disappear before death, and depending on what functions also disappear daily. Rights need to be present at least from shortly after birth to death.
BB. The brain needs to be capable of these functions. Arguably this is the same criteria as 1.II.AA. Since if the brain is not doing something it could be said that it is impossible for it to not be doing it. Capability has two meanings: the statistical probability of something happening being high, which is the same as hypothetical ability Or that something is in such a stage that if its inputs were to change then what it is capable of would happen, also hypothetical(Bad definition I know, but it should be clear and also a important input is time). What is this something with variable inputs? Is it a brain, the process of brain development, both? Why one over the other options?
In less cases but in some the brains capability of some brain functions changes in the same way as the ability to demonstrate brain functions do.
Most brain functions change with time. If we base rights on most brain functions then the existence of any rights at all would be much much more volatile them they actually are.
Keeping all that in mind it seems clear that a human being also being a “human person” from birth to death is hypothetical, that human beings stop and start being “human persons” at times and still retain their rights. Also human beings which lack basic brain functions, such as babies( object permanence, for example. which many animals possess), possess rights. Thus the argument from sapience is unsound. Premise one is not true.
The truth value of premise two depends on the definition of personhood. The definition of personhood is arbitrary for it depends on a arbitrary selection of brain functions which are themselves usually ill defined and heavily dependent on subjective interpretation. thus you might as well make a reference to absurdity and say abortion is allowed simply because people say it is, no reason to give . This is because the argument from sapience is equivalent to doing such.
Jean piaget(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget) tells us that human beings don't begin to think logically about events and ideas till approximately age 7. We lack a sense of object permanence till around age 2. We also lack the ability to tell that if a object is stretch so that when its skinny there is not less of the object compared to how much was there when it was wider in-till we reach a later age. It would be difficult to consider anyone a “human person” with out the last 2 abilities.
Also i must mention, fetuses are simply human. There is no such thing as sub-human. The idea of sub-human is a horrible one. It suggests a hierarchy of organisms with humanity at the top, and because of humanities “superiority”(superiority according to what standard?) they are allowed the ability to do what would otherwise be dis-moral(which seems like a non-sequitur to me).
Alright, I thought I'd throw this into the discussion (a logic bomb?), based upon my research I've ascertained that the majority of abortions don't even fall into the argument from sapience.
This handy guide shows us that foetal development just barely starts between weeks 10-12.
According to wikipedia, the nervous system begins development around week ten.
So, from all this information, I would make the argument that we can reasonably infer that the majority of abortions involve embryos and foetuses which are either incapable of awareness (no brain) or have such a rudimentary system with no inputs that they can't be aware. In this case I think the remaining 11% to 12% of abortions begin to enter into the argument from sapience which you deconstructed.
I applaud you for a well-reasoned argument, but I had some ideas which weren't considered:
#1
Suppose we start with a reasonable premise that a foetus under 20 weeks of development is less sapient than the mother.
Suppose we accept the definition of personhood where a born person is a person (as you explained cogently, the definition of a person is quite flexible and arbitrary, at least in a legal sense).
In this case, one could argue that abortion for foetuses under twenty weeks is a matter of granting the mother, who has greater capacity for individuality, thought, and so-forth, right over her own body over something which is severely limited in this capacity and isn't yet granted the "benefit of the doubt" which the title of personhood confers.
#2
Suppose we impart the commonly accepted notion of "dead" where having a heartbeat qualifies you as being alive into the argument from sapience.
In this case, all foetuses under nineteen weeks old are abortable because the heart doesn't even begin beating until approximately week nineteen. It's reasonable to assume that a being without a functioning heart in this capacity cannot be aware or thinking because these processes require a large amount of energy which is supplied by blood.
#3
Suppose we conduct tests upon developing foetuses' and babies' brains which shows us once and for all that a foetus doesn't become a "baby" until say, week X (where X is some high week, like between 30 and 36).
In this case, the argument from sapience plus knowledge from science would give us a more strict window of when a foetus should be rationally protected from abortion.
#4
This is basically an extended version of #1, but using practicality as a measure alongside sapience, and with high priority.
Suppose we consider the mother's rights as a person to be of paramount importance. These include a right over her body.
In this case, it follows that a less developed foetus' life is considered less valuable than the right of a woman to have full control over her reproductive system, even if it means that around 1% of abortions will end the lives of highly developed foetuses. We consider their sapience to be less than the woman's and a sacrifice until a better solution emerges which satisfies the woman's rights in addition to enabling the foetus to live.
I'd like to address some of what you said:
AA. The brain needs to demonstrate these functions:
A lot of brain functions will not always be demonstrated, and some will be timed based for even adults. Thus personhood, and rights become transient. Rights disappear before death, and depending on what functions also disappear daily. Rights need to be present at least from shortly after birth to death.
BB. The brain needs to be capable of these functions. Arguably this is the same criteria as 1.II.AA. Since if the brain is not doing something it could be said that it is impossible for it to not be doing it. Capability has two meanings: the statistical probability of something happening being high, which is the same as hypothetical ability Or that something is in such a stage that if its inputs were to change then what it is capable of would happen, also hypothetical(Bad definition I know, but it should be clear and also a important input is time). What is this something with variable inputs? Is it a brain, the process of brain development, both? Why one over the other options?
I believe that the best answer one can give to your question concerning when a brain has abilities selected by society to make the person eligible for personhood and whether those rights disappear when the functions cease, is that in our society there is a tendency to grant a benefit until exception. In other words, under such a proposed society where personhood is granted based on the brain meeting qualifiers, that personhood would continue being granted until aberrant behaviour warrants a retest, and that test reveals something to be lost. Similar to how a drivers license is granted after some conditions are met, and revoked after you are caught driving drunk for example, not when you happen to drive after drinking a beer (which technically might disqualify you, but police don't keep instantaneous tabs on everyone).
so would a correct summary of what your saying be that when two beings have a claim to one of themselves that the one demonstrating the highest level of awareness should have complete control over the situation?
I decided to make up names/categories because i don't know already established names for these concepts. they are defined as they come up, feel free to suggest alternative names.
If a argument is unsound then it doesn't support its conclusion. I would say that the Argument from Sapience(Lets call it AFS) has with in its scope all abortions.
However because rights are awarded to human beings which lack even basic brain functions and that it would be very difficult to define personhood in such a way to non-arbitarily include only human-beings in pre-birth periods of development as having non-person-hood then AFS might as well be considered unsound and thus inconclusive on weather fetuses have rights.
Another argument whose conclusion is the following: That all human beings which lack a brain/braintissue also lack rights (lets call it Argument from um... biology? AFB) would have nothing to say on any human beings with a brain or with any brain tissue. AFB would be sound from my first analysis of it. . another argument stating that there is a certain amount of brain development required would have something to say on all human beings which do not reach the period of development(Lets call this argument the up-till-a-point argument or UPA).
your #2 is a very good insight for It would be very beneficial to distinguish between parts of the brain which give rise to consciousness, awareness, etc(C-functions) and which just simply pump the heart, work the lungs, etc(H-functions). If it can be shown that H-functions are the only functions present till a certain point then that point would be a very good point to use for the UPA argument.
all three of the above arguments come in the form of Barbara.( I forgot to put a 'a' in-between the 'b' and 'r' in my last post.) thus if someone disagreed with them they would have to attack their premises.
I like how you pick your sources, very good.
I like number 3. I think science needs to be used more in legal matters. It too often seems like politicians yelling at each other and not backing themselves up by empirical methods.
a sort summery of my criticism on the AFS is that some brain functions, like awareness disappear nightly. sleeping would constitute aberrant behavior of awareness; however it reappears when one awakes. If a certain level of awareness must be demonstrated for a human being to be a person then person-hood is lost nightly along with rights since AFS considers them dependent on person-hood.This is not the case in actuality, people maintain rights despite sleeping. If awareness must be within a statistical likelihood of occurring within a certain amount of time, aka capable; then those constraints would be arbitrary and why they are chosen would need to be shown superior to other constraints like a longer period of time(9 months) or such in order to be more acceptable then a similar argument with different constants(a fetus being a hypothetical person and thus deserving of rights for example, similar because a sleeping human-being would also constitute a hypothetical person) . awareness also seems like one of those things which would have to be included in person-hood, in order for it to have much value.
so would a correct summary of what your saying be that when two beings have a claim to one of themselves that the one demonstrating the highest level of awareness should have complete control over the situation?
Yes, in the case that the lower-awareness individual cannot speak, or even comprehend their rights, for example. I suppose I should have added the qualifier that when the difference between awareness is so great that one of the individuals cannot even understand their situation, it seems reasonable to give custody of the body to the other who can.
If a argument is unsound then it doesn't support its conclusion. I would say that the Argument from Sapience(Lets call it AFS) has with in its scope all abortions.
It has all within its scope which care about foetal awareness. Some arguments are purely rights based, and see the mother as executive over her body.
With regards to AFS, I think the primary way it can be used without being seen as arbitrary is that if we find that a foetus isn't developed enough to be aware of its environment, then it isn't perceived as cruel to end its life because it isn't even aware of what it lost. I suppose this can be thought of as a stretch on the saying "What he doesn't know won't hurt him." This I believe is also a way to justify euthanasia (such as for deep-coma patients) because it is currently understood that they aren't even aware of their existence. So in other words under these contexts, an AFS isn't an argument for what the person will or may feel in the near future, but instead an argument used to justify a procedure as not being cruel to the recipient presently. Another strain of it arguably appears when we feel consoled when a person dies in their sleep, it is seen as less violent or cruel for that person to die while not aware of it.
An AFB would have the benefit of allowing human clones who are born without brains (beyond what is necessary for autonomic functions I suppose) to exist rationally to serve as organ hosts.
The UPA argument is the hardest to defend because as we both saw, it relies on a very grey boundary of what we feel is "too soon" or "too late." Science will be our best friend here, but we must always remember how life is rarely divided into discreet units that are easily divided.
It`s not a fetus.It has 46 human chromosomes, it’s a male or a female, and it’s complete, meaning nothing else will be added to it, just growth and development.
First off, finger and toe nails (along with hair) are not made up of cells. They're made up of a protein called keratin. Therefore, your toenail clippings do not have 46 chromosomes. But that's not my point. My point is that although parts of your body, like dead skin cells, have 46 chromosomes, they are merely small parts of a large organism. A fetus or an embryo of a human being has 46 chromosomes in each cell and each cell helps to be part of a body! An entire body!
First off, finger and toe nails (along with hair) are not made up of cells. They're made up of a protein called keratin. Therefore, your toenail clippings do not have 46 chromosomes.
"With the exception of red blood cells... EVERY SINGLE LAST CELL IN THE HUMAN BODY has all the chromosomes in human DNA."
And sex cells. ;) But besides that, that wasn't my point. I know how many chromosomes are in a human somatic cell. My point is that and arm is not a human being because it is part of the whole. And tongue is only a part of a human as well, not the whole thing.
So even though each of these body parts is not a human, the organism that they make up is a human being. Your toenail clippings might not have personhood, but that's because your toenail clippings are not complete bodies, merely parts.
And sex cells. ;) But besides that, that wasn't my point.
Then don't make it your point. you were the one that listed "it has all the chromosomes" as a reason it was a person. If it's not a reason, don't list it.
Now what am i supposed to think... "not part of something else" makes something a person? Do I really need to bother with the tearing apart of that one ? Besides being a silly criteria in and of itself, you do realize that the fetus doesn't stop being part of something else until the umbilical is cut?
There is one defining criteria of people that makes them people. It is very obvious what it is. "Cogito ergo Sum" isn't just a catchy saying. You're dancing around it listing these peripheral attributes like possession of chromosomes and structural coherence because you know that the fetus doesn't possess the primary one that actually matters.
I'm not sure this statment proves an unborn childs sapience. Its not all that refreshing either. Yes a fetus is alive. But 'alive' means nothing, it has no greater self-awareness.
Also just because it doesn't need "anything added to it", it doesn't mean it proves your point.
It`s not a fetus.It has 46 human chromosomes, it’s a male or a female, and it’s complete, meaning nothing else will be added to it, just growth and development.
You keep using the word foetus, do you even have a deeper understanding of what a foetus is?
Yes, it is. A fetus is, by definition, "an unborn or unhatched vertebrate in the later stages of development" If the fetus has not been born, it is still a fetus. The fetal stage of growth occurs after the embryonic stage and will continue until birth.
also i suppose sapience could be made a metaphor to puberty. it is impossible to be considered a man before puberty, during puberty you are becoming a man or rather more accurately you are some mixture of man and boy, and after it you are a man which all men can admittedly act boyishly and in some moments not measure up to the standards of maturity which may be imposed on us by the expectation of our mates [we don't grow up, our toys just get bigger! :) ]. Like wise it could be postulated that it is impossible to be considered a person before your conception, that you are becoming a person well in the womb or rather you are some mixture of a person and non person and that after birth you will have moments in which you fail to meet the criteria of personhood. so what does this entail?
The important con that should be considered is can we choose to kill unwanted pregnancies? One shouldn’t be so irresponsible to land up in a situation where they have to be unmerciful to the unborn
A growing embryo is considered human with the heartbeats initiating as early as 21st day of conception. So what if we cannot see the human form, it does have the potential to gain one.
We must look at the reasons women have abortions. In general it has to do with irresponsibility. Very rarely the reasons are medical or rape. Should society be responsible for a females irresponsibility?
Another problem I have is the availability. The first thought that comes to the mind is abortion. If the couple feel they will have financial difficulties - abortion is the first answer. Not improving their home economics or getting better jobs. Abortion should always be the last action - not the first.
However in this society I don't think we can live without abortion. It's like coffee - we don't need it.. but we choose to be controlled by it. So if we are to keep it - it should be heavily regulated.
A teenagers brain (especially in this 'politically correct society'), is crazy. Its crazy for sex 24 hours a day. When I was a kid I used to beat my poor thing to death three a day. Without correct sexual education, a teenager will go into the world blind about the dangers of sex (you can thank your friendly neighbourhood church and its opal ring "abstinence" crusade for that slip-up). So I do agree on what you say, "society be responsible for a females irresponsibility".
But when it happens, you cant look retrospectivly, you have to look forward. As a teen mother, you cant be given advice such as, "you should have been more carefull", when its already happend. So family planning and all that crap can go out the window.
As for financial planning goes, 16-24 years of age for a young woman is the prime age for develpment in educational areas which will one day solidify that persons job stability and stable income. I dont think that their first option should be to suddenly drop everything and take up the cash register at burger king, thats a sure-fire way to ruin two peoples lives! A woman should asspire to greater things in life rather than paying the rest of her life for a mistake which chould have been fixed with one easy pill, injection, baby-killing device or whatever.
I would not liek to see our kind of society (sex crazed maniacs) without abortion. Young teenagers lives in ruins and the detromental affects it will have to the next generation of disfunctional youths. You have to realize what a young child growing up in a fatherless household is like. His/her mother working 12 hour shifts at a fast food outlet just to keep the shanty roof over their heads. He will grow up in a bum neighbour-hood full of gangs and crack-fiends and eventually become one himself.
I am 20, polyamorous and a virgin. Our society is not sex crazed.
It is at a minimum 16 or 18 years to raise a kid(possibly less), at most a life time.
A teen mother is dependent on her own mother. she is in no economic situation to even raise herself. She is burdening her network of support, but given proper support can indeed get a education and a wonderful life.
my dad is more of a provider then a father. At times it seems like he might as well not even be there. Good friends of mine have grown up in motherless houses, split between parents and in fatherless houses. A nuclear family is not proven to be best. All my friends are quite well as am myself. Many of my friends came from backgrounds which should of lead them into being crack-fiends according to you; they are not.
It should also be noted a teenage mother is only a teenager for so long. One of my best friends girl-friends was a teenage mom(and now just a mom), another one of my best friends ex-girlfriends became pregnant by another man shortly after they broke up and is either 16 or 17. I have seen these women and their situation and i fully believe that they still possess every opportunity in the world if not more then they would have not being a mother. Neither of them have rich parents by the way. they are actually on the lower end of the economic spectrum.
I do agree with you on most points, I believe we do share a similar opinions.
However I don’t know if you were raised in the Amish Province in Pennsylvania or Vatican City but this society we will on now, IS sex crazed even if you aren’t. A society raised by bikini models and skimpy clothing isn't a factor of a non-sex crazed society. It’s getting more and more as sexual repression becomes less and less.
Think about it this way, guys think about sex every 3 seconds, that a fact! Girls go out wearing barely anything for sexual is now days.
"A teen mother is dependent on her own mother. She is in no economic situation to even raise her. She is burdening her network of support, but given proper support can indeed get an education and a wonderful life. "
This is true for most middle to upper class societies. However I talk mostly on behalf on people on the more downtrodden communities because I used to come from one. Teen mums, who are left with a baby to take care of and rely on their mums for support, don’t always have a reliable income themselves. We can’t assume every household is economically stable enough fit to take another child into their family.
"Many of my friends came from backgrounds which should of lead them into being crack-fiends according to you; they are not.”
Yes I grew up in one of these neighborhoods and it looks like your friends were lucky. However we have to look at the community as a whole not a small sample. The social problems with teens start can start with the fatherless household, or the mum always working or the poor living standards. Worst of all these affects are only exacerbated by the poor kind of environment the child will grow up in. There will be crime, alcohol abuse and many others. It may not have affected your friends but you have to realize this is where teen disfunctionality starts and fuels the next generation of crime, prostitution, drug pushers and gang members. I always tend to look at the worst case scenarios rather than the best.
I am happy for you friend for breaking that cycle, however again we cant rely on people to eventually just straighten their lives out, you must realize how lucky your friends are. Not everyone will have the same support they did.
If we want to help the community we have to give them all the education they deserve. If they slip-up then abortion should be their next choice after adoption.
Yes, stop the problem at the root. Un-born children have no rights because at this stage they have no self-awareness in the slightest. No spiritual existence. Remember, if it has no sapience we can't classify it as a regular, normal human being so it cannot qualify for the default human rights.
If 90% of abortions are made before brain tissue is even created, no need to worry about the ethics of it at all. This stage is merely miniscule life-forms.
This argument proves it is even reasonable to abort your unborn (1-6 week) child if you plainly don’t want superficial scarring (previously an un-heard of reason).
"So are you making an argument that it is better to not live then live a certain kind of life?"
I am saying that a fetus which is alive by definition will die by choice of another human being and be morally sound all the same because it has no sapience attached to it.
So the whole, 'never having a chance to live' is not a feasible argument simply because we don’t talk in future predicted scenarios. We talk about right-here, right-now. Never what could have been.
So I do agree on what you say, "society be responsible for a females irresponsibility".
I wasn't making a statement. I actually disagree.
Educating teens about sex only enhances their sex drive. I had no thoughts on sex until we started learning about it. At the age of 11 at that. lol. We learn in school that its ok to have sex - as long as you love them. Which is wrong because it will always lead to promiscuity.
People should learn from their mistakes. If I killed someone - should I not be put in jail? As punishment - time for reflection etc? Or should I be allowed to continue because going to jail puts a burden on society, doesn't actually deter me from crime and would surely ruin my life in the long run as getting a job etc. would be much harder?
You're right however. People born in poor conditions (which abortions tend to negate) tend to get caught up in the cycle. Abortion isn't the answer. Less sex - or sex only with the right people is.
"Educating teens about sex only enhances their sex drive"
Worlds most spurious argument? You have absolutely zero evidence to support that statement. You can’t honestly believe a bunch of diagrams on penises and how babies are made can incite sexual fantasies! Teens are naturally sexual, it’s called puberty which answers my next point.
"At the age of 11 at that"
You hadn't even hit puberty so no wonder you weren’t thinking about sex. I’m just glad sex-ed kicked in before the hormones. Think about this, do you think it benefits society to keep kids totally in the dark about sex till there an adult or to educate them about the right and wrong way to have sex.
"We learn in school that its ok to have sex - as long as you love them. "
Yes what the teachers are told you are purely opinion based and I believe should be left for the parents.
"Which is wrong because it will always lead to promiscuity."
That’s foolish, again no evidence for this proclamation. Promiscuity is a much sensationalized word and it always used in a bad light. However it is just a word to describe a human’s need for sexual gratification. What they are saying totally makes sense, if you love someone and sleep with them, you aren’t as likely to go out and cheat on them.
Promiscuous: characterized by or involving indiscriminate mingling or association, esp. having sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis.
If your teachers say you should love the person you’re sleeping with then they are discouraging promiscuity...........
"People should learn from their mistakes."
Mate I totally agree with you on that one but what I was saying before was that society won’t help our teen parents with that kind of attitude. They should be supporting them instead.
"Doesn’t actually deter me from crime and would surely ruin my life in the long run as getting a job"
Obviously you can’t deter someone from a crime they have already committed... It is clear that a teenager finding out she is pregnant is the most devastating news; it is life changing. I highly doubt she would go off and do it again, not till she is ready.
Has teenage sex been rising or falling since sex education has been introduced?
Yes, there are tons of other reasons for this correlation. Sex is everywhere. Should it be in schools too? Why should sex education be taught to pupils who are too young to have sex? If you're going to start teaching them atleast do it once they're legally allowed to have sex. Maybe sex education could lead to a decrease in sexual activity - but with a conservative, not a liberal attitude.
I highly doubt she would go off and do it again, not till she is ready.
You're wrong. They do it again all the time.
Children are getting pregnant from the age of 10 nowadays (that's not including rape). Because of the attitude that it's ok to have sex aslong as you 'love' them. But we all know that until the age of atleast 19 (and that's still young) nobody understands love. In the end the messege leads to - have sex with the person you're with, not the person you 'love'.
Look what happened when kids were kept in the dark. They didn't have tons of underage sex. Maybe that's because it was different times and there weren't tits in their face every other second. But atleast if you're going to teach them about it - teach them that it's wrong to have sex until after you're 16/18/21 or w/e.
That statistic is purely falsified and slanted to fit your point. Yes sex has been on the rise and you blame sex ed? Sex ed was a response to the teen sex rising! You fail to introduce the hundreds of factors that have increase teen sexual behavior.
Allow me to demonstrate a few:
-Increased alcohol abuse
-Christian faith declines, abstinence declines
-Woman gain more rights
-Television idealizes sex
-Society evolves to accept the sex taboo
-Increased drug abuse
-Corporations exploit sexual images
Just to name a few. And you blame SEXUAL EDUCATION?!
The very concept enforced to reduce the outbreak of HIV, teen pregnancy and COUNTLESS STI's and STD's?????
"Why should sex education be taught to pupils who are too young to have sex?"
People I know had sex when they were 13, if they had it any later it would have been too late. Guess what? They used a condom! Now I can guarantee you, the neighborhood I grew up in, they would have had sex at such a young age nonetheless of sexual education. But this example proves that sexual education benefited people in the community. This is the entire point of sex-ed, to educate.
"You're wrong. They do it again all the time."
Gratz, you have nothing to prove that statement.
"Children are getting pregnant from the age of 10 nowadays" "...that's not including rape)."
"attitude that it's ok to have sex aslong as you 'love' them... In the end the messege leads to - have sex with the person you're with, not the person you 'love'"
Again, I said this before; emotions and sex are purely left for parents. This statement proves no thesis of yours. Sex is not based on emotions on any scale. It is purely hormone based. When you’re in love you still need your hormones for libido. You think animals need love when they have sex? If it is purely natural, you can’t defy the laws of nature.
So tell me, when it is ok to have sex??
"Look what happened when kids were kept in the dark. They didn't have tons of underage sex."
Firstly, my explanation will serve you better knowing how old you are. I can only assume your maybe under 16 because you have a very repressed view on sex.
So if you’re just a teenager (presumptuously), you would feel perfectly comfortable knowing nothing about sex? It would feel right to understand nothing about what is happening to your body? Then you think about a girl in a naughty way then - oops, what was that? You try and hide your dirty thoughts, thinking that your mind is impure. You carry on this way for the rest of your life. These symptoms have a diagnosis. It’s known as sexual repression. Let me tell you, it is far from uncommon and is a horrible affliction to ones life.
Can I tell you about a group of people who suffered from sexual repression? They grew up with celibacy as their answer. They only thought pure thoughts and repressed all urges. As a result, confused as they were, this group sodomized and indecently assaulted 100 thousand + underage children. These were the priests, the bishops and the pastors. This has been going on long before sexual freedom.
“But at least if you're going to teach them about it - teach them that it's wrong to have sex until after you're 16/18/21 or w/e.”
Maybe ‘you’ (the mystical and know-everything teacher) can explain to these kids as to why sex before that age is ‘wrong’ when it clearly is not and especially when it is exercised under the influence of sexual-education and with the help of condoms.
Perhaps you would like to argue why condoms are ‘wrong’ to solidify your statement ;)
Wow. You actually hit the nail on the spot for the reasons for increased teen sexual behaviour. But let me make it clear (again). I don't blame sexual education. It's one of the reasons.
I think we only disagree on the concept of sex education. Or our experiences of it anyway.
It is good to be taught to practice safe sex. It is good to learn about the dangers/consequences of sex. But being TAUGHT isn't enough, because as clear as daylight - it doesn't help. Young teenagers are having underage sex, they are catching diseases, getting pregnant at an increased rate. I don't know about you... but to me it's wrong.
Sex was literally brought into our lives earlier than it would have been. The messege was have sex - but make it safe. Not don't have sex (until you're old/mature enough) and make it safe. The problem is the liberal attitude. Liberal sex education = bad. That's my point.
If you were not taught how to put a condom on, in any years of high schooling, then one of your teachers are applicable to be the victim of a law-suit. If you performed sexual activity with your spouse and got her pregnant, you could make allot of money from one of teachers.
Learning how to put a condom is the entire essence of reducing teen pregnancy and STD's. If safe-sex is performed by teenagers, then it is a non-contributing factor to pregnancy.
" But being TAUGHT isn't enough, because as clear as daylight - it doesn't help. Young teenagers are having underage sex; they are catching diseases, getting pregnant at an increased rate. I don't know about you... but to me it's wrong."
Well... yes, it does help. You make the basis of this argument with the fact that teenagers are still engrossed in having sex, but what you fail to realize is that education has taught them how to enact safe-sexual procedures decreasing there chance of becoming pregnant. No one argues about teen sexual activity as it is irrelevant if they are doing under the influence of protection.
"they are catching diseases, getting pregnant at an increased rate."
How about you show me data, telling me, kids who have been taught about sex-ed, are still not performing safe-sex at an un-desirable rate. Also take into account private schools only have optional sexual-education and the majority of private schools are religious schools who only teach of abstinence. Even if the figure shows that only 40% of kids are using condoms due to sex-ed classes, then that is still an incredible result.
"Sex was literally brought into our lives earlier than it would have been. The message was have sex - but make it safe."
You do not understand the principles of our society. You think that if kids grew up without sex-ed in their earlier years, they would be having less sex? Sex is cultural and kids are going to do it anyway, so we have to teach them how to have sex-properly with the use of a condom to make sure they do not contribute to the rise of pregnancy.
Also I distinctly remember never being encouraged to have sex in the first place, I don’t know what you are talking about.
"Not don't have sex (until you're old/mature enough) and make it safe."
You ignored my question in my previous post asking when you think the appropriate age is. This proves you don’t know much about sex. Why does maturity have anything to do with sex? What does age have anything to do with sex when a 12 year old male can already ejaculate. Especially when this is all under the influence of safe-sex, you have no basis to say that sex is wrong outside these variables of yours.
"P.S. The rest of your bullshit was ignored. =D"
Funny that, it sounds as if you read all of it and didn't have anything easy to rebut so you ignored it in your next dispute. Also if you read it properly without such a bias opinion you would be less inclined to be falsely prophesizing your point of view in a spurious fashion. Here are some examples of spurious comments:
-"I had no thoughts on sex until we started learning about it. At the age of 11 at that"
-"Why should sex education be taught to pupils who are too young to have sex?"
-"Children are getting pregnant from the age of 10 nowadays” ROFL WTF?!
So do most cells in my body. Each cell in my body has the potential for life. They each have 46 human chromosomes, and with proper culturing can become a full human. However, it is not illegal for me to kill some of my cells. Every day, over a hundred million sperm cells that could become a human die each day, and thank God that is not a issue with the law.
Not to mention that much of our legal system isn't based on precrime (some exceptions of course). For example, drinking alcohol won't get you fined for possibly driving drunk. Shooting your rifle in a forest won't get you fined for possibly shooting an endangered species.
You forget that denying its life is not a precurser for murder. The whole concept is weather its ethical to deny someones potential to exist before that unborn being has a choice of its own.
However the belief resides in the fact that if that unborn being never comes into existance in the first place, it cant make a choice nonetheless hence it is fallacious to ask weather its ethical to steal the right of a non-existing, un-spiritual and inamite being as rights are exclusivly to the living, not the living of the future.
Abortion is a form of murder and demeans the value of human life. When a pregnant women feels a kick in her belly, she doesn't say "Oh, the fetus kicked" or "Oh, the mass of cells that hasn't become a person kicked", she says "The baby kicked." Yes, after conception you have a real human being waiting to enter the world. Why should taking someone's life when they're in the womb be any different than taking their life when they're a baby in the crib? Pro-choice advocates claim this isn't a real baby only to justify their wrong acts in their own minds. Even if you don't believe abortion is murder, it still demeans the value of human life, since women can so callously stomp out a living being simply because they're inconvenienced.
Other birth control is readily available; thus, abortion shouldn't be a form of birth control. There are dozens of birth control methods that can keep you from becoming pregnant, including the 100 percent effective one: abstinence. Maybe if abortion wasn't available, people wouldn't be so careless in the first place.
The societal contributions of a potentially valuable human being are wiped out. What would the world be like if the mothers of Abe Lincoln, George Washington, or Thomas Edison had had an abortion? Just maybe a woman has become pregnant despite all birth control attempts because the child is destined to do something great.
Women who have abortions often suffer major psychological damage from the experience along with, in some cases, the father of the child. Many women who have abortion in their younger years end up living the rest of their lives in perpetual guilt. Even if that women doesn't consider it murder at the time, that may change as she matures. Even Jane Roe (not her real name), the original woman behind the famous court decision, has completely changed her mind on abortion. She filed a petition to have the decision overturned to help relieve the guilt of hundreds of thousands of needless deaths she blames on herself. Also, let's not forget that there are two parents of every aborted child. The father may feel just as guilty. The father may even want the child, but he has no choice if the mother chooses abortion.
The advances of genetic testing may prompt more abortions (to avoid having the non-ideal child). All of us who have or want kids imagine them growing up to be doctors, senators, sports stars, or whatever. But what would you do if you knew the child would have Down's Syndrome? What would you do if you knew the child would have an intelligence level lower than that required to enter public school? What if the child had a strong risk of schizophrenia? Would you still have the child or would you want an abortion? As genetic knowledge continues to grow, we are able to determine more and more about what a child will be like as an adult. Legalized abortion could turn babies into science experiments.
There are many couples who spend years on waiting lists trying to adopt a child. The number of couples out there who cannot have a child of their own for physical reasons are too numerous to count. The waiting list for adopting babies can be 5-10 years or more. Young women in their teens are right to be concerned that they're not ready to effectively raise a child. However, if that is the case, there are plenty of wonderful people out there who are. Not only would you be bringing a valuable life into the world, you'd also be making the dream of a childless couple come true.
The abortion decision is often made by minors or young adults, who don't have the maturity and life experiences to make good decisions. There's a good reason why we don't allow people to drink alcohol, smoke, or drive until they're a certain age. It's because they haven't matured enough to make good, sound decisions. We've all made bad decisions in our younger years that provide us with life experience to make sounder judgment in the future. The one skill that seems to take the longest time to develop is the ability to consider the feelings and needs of someone besides ourselves. Why should such a life or death decision as abortion be made by a person who probably hasn't developed that capacity?
People have the right not to see their tax dollars go to something they find immoral. Abortion is a medical procedure that must be performed by a doctor. The government contributes to many health care institutions such as Healthcare for the Homeless, Planned Parenthood, free clinics, etc. All of us who pay taxes have the right to prevent that money from going to something we consider murder.
Abortion eliminates legal rights of the unborn child. The documents of our founding fathers state that we are all entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By legalizing abortion, we take those rights away from a future American citizen. Just because the babies can't speak for themselves doesn't mean they have no rights. If a 1-month old is murdered, it that really different than abortion as far as protecting an American's life? If a person shoots and kills a pregnant woman, shouldn't the punishment be more severe? If you legalize abortion, it would tell the courts there is no difference.
Abortion exposes women to various health risks and the danger of losing fertility. Abortion exposes woman to a number of health risks including, but not limited to, infection, sterility, and in rare cases, death. A number of short-term symptoms such as bleeding, fever, nausea, and vomiting are also common.
Abortion is against doctors' Hippocratic Oath. Every American doctor must take this fundamental oath, which says "First, do no harm". It threatens the very fabric of the entire medical field if doctors start using their own personal philosophies on life to decide who should or shouldn't be harmed. Whether or not you think abortion should be allowed, it cannot be disputed that a doctor is harming a living organism. Killing a human being doesn't serve any higher medical purpose and is therefore a violation of the oath.
Ok firstly, I can find about 50 things wrong with your essay. You have spurious reasoning, invalid statistics, and a clearly bias and ethno-centric view. However I have arthritis and the clock is ticking for me to tell you as much as I can as to why this essay, is poorly executed, and appallingly deceptive.
"When a pregnant women feels a kick in her belly, she doesn't say "Oh, the fetus kicked" or "Oh, the mass of cells that hasn't become a person kicked", she says "The baby kicked.""
This statement is full of a personal opinion and doesn’t contain one bit of evidence that proves your point. When she says “baby” she uses it as a euphemism. However it doesn’t matter how she uses, this statement is completely irrelevant to the argument of an un-born child’s self-awareness. Self awareness is what defines a human spirit (or soul if it helps). Hence this is a totally stupefied argument that does not prove your thesis. If you don’t know how or what self-awareness has to do with the topic of abortion, you shouldn’t even be allowed to make a post at all.
”Yes, after conception you have a real human being waiting to enter the world. Why should taking someone's life when they're in the womb be any different than taking their life when they're a baby in the crib?”
You again back up your statements, not with relevant statistics and data, but with personalized opinion. The question of the debate was Abortion; for or against. With this, you should build an argument based on valid points, not perspective.
” have a real human being waiting to enter the world”
It weird how you make use of the word “real” as a twig is “real”; a rock is “real”; even dirt. Everything in the physical universe is “real”. So of course an unborn baby is “real”, what does that prove?
” Why should taking someone's life when they're in the womb be any different than taking their life when they're a baby in the crib?”
Again, your purely prejudice statement is not backed up by any kind of fact. This is what debating is, you give fact in exchange for credibility. Also when you use a statement that implies taking life is wrong, you lay completely oblivious to the fact that as an omnivore you are involved in the deaths of hundreds of animals, hundreds of plant material and every time you wash your hands you are killing germs! You have to be clear how you direct these statements because they are meaningless in this kind of topic.
” Pro-choice advocates claim this isn't a real baby only to justify their wrong acts in their own minds.”
They use arguments to justify there opinion, which is exactly what you are doing now. They never bluntly say an unborn child is not a sapient being without having reason to believe so. If they do say so, then ask them why and they will give you an erudite answer.
Again you use the phrase, “wrong acts in their own minds”, partly reflecting an un-backed opinion and a naïve statement reflecting your mis-interpretation the pro-choice cause.
“Women can so callously stomp out a living being simply because they're inconvenienced.”
This quote only proves you have little and a very subtracted view of why a woman would have abortion. “Inconvenient”, in the way you are implying suggests that all woman, despite rape, teen pregnancy, financial instability and risk of life to mother are inadequate reasons to have an abortion. In fact you put them in a light that makes them look greedy and unwilling. When you use the word “callous”, you unreasonably sensationalize your argument implying you have reason to change people’s opinion for personal gain rather than stating relevant statistics and articulately explaining as to why your view is more feasible.
” abortion shouldn't be a form of birth control.”
This statement implies that you have no understanding of what birth control is as the word explains it itself. It is to regulate the chance of contraception. Abortion is used after contraception and isn’t used to prevent it.
” 100 percent effective one: abstinence. Maybe if abortion wasn't available, people wouldn't be so careless in the first place.”
Abstinence being taught in schools is the reason why children are deprived of sexual education. Sex-ed, was implemented to combat the failure of abstinence teachings as unplanned pregnancy skyrocketed from the 1950 to this day and is still going up.
“If abortion wasn't available, people wouldn't be so careless in the first place”
I have a suggestion, why don’t you conduct a study proving your thesis? You’re saying that abortion availability determines the amount of unplanned pregnancies? Firstly, ruling out abortion all together won’t stop abortion it will just be conducted in an illegal fashion and will be incredibly unsafe. “Every year, about 19-20 million are done by individuals without the requisite skills… 68,000 woman die as a result…Many woman travel to third world countries where abortions are legal” - World Health Organization.
” What would you do if you knew the child would have an intelligence level lower than that required to enter public school? ... Would you still have the child or would you want an abortion? ”
This is the kind of backwards-thinking you’re suggesting we make. We cut back on vital scientific research with the intention of leaving us in the dark about our children’s future complications. With no in depth analysis as to why abortion is wrong on a philosophical and scientific scale, you have no structure to base your ‘banning of genetic research’ on.
“Legalized abortion could turn babies into science experiments.”
If your making assonance to anti-stem cell research, you obviously have no clue about prosthetic stem-cells that are not derived from a fetus. If not then I apologize as this sentence was totally random and had a hardly visible connection to your argument. Also who cares if babies, sapient or not become science experiments. Babies are tested all the time. Firstly they are tested for blood levels and all that sought. They are analyzed for the sake of statistics and data. They won’t be dissected if that’s what you’re suggesting. An unborn baby, assumedly an aborted fetus, is ripe for scientific discovery on the other hand. Again with no analysis as to why abortion is wrong, you have no right to say why experimenting on an aborted fetus is wrong.
“Abortion eliminates legal rights of the unborn child.”
If an unborn being never comes into existence in the first place, it cant make a choices nonetheless hence it is fallacious to ask weather its ethical to steal the right of a non-existing, un-spiritual and imamate being as rights are exclusively to the human beings, not the fetus’.
” The documents of our founding fathers state that we are all entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
What makes you think that when he said “we”, he was referring to humans and fetuses? A fetus is a tangible object with potential for sapience but with no current consciousness. So how can it be that an object without any mind of its own be able to possess rights that overcome it in depth?
” By legalizing abortion, we take those rights away from a future American citizen.”
By that logic it means if I was choosing to become an American citizen in the near future, I am already entitled to American rights. I live in Australia and I am now able to possess guns, not use the metric system and pay tax to America rather than Australia. How can that possibly make sense to you?
“Abortion is against doctors' Hippocratic Oath.”
Just so you know the term Hippocratic Oath wasn’t named that way because it was hypocrisy, it was because it was named after the Greek Philosopher Hippocrates.
” Every American doctor must take this fundamental oath, which says "First, do no harm".”
Almost all schools in America have abandoned that oath since 1970. It’s meaningless.
” It threatens the very fabric of the entire medical field if doctors start using their own personal philosophies on life to decide who should or shouldn't be harmed.”
An abortion is a patient’s choice, not a doctor’s choice…
” Whether or not you think abortion should be allowed, it cannot be disputed that a doctor is harming a living organism.”
Again living organism is a wrong word to use. As I said before, living organism encompasses all life forms including bacteria, animals and plant life. Yes it is harming it but not harming a sapient, free-thinking being.
I hope you have the audacity to read and digest this information. I suggest you should read the rest of my material on this debate as you will soon find out that abortion is not a black and white topic but it truly relative. I hope you will also see that you have to use relevant data to back up your information rather than basing it on solid opinions.