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merlyn (47)

merlyn
  merlyn@stonehenge.com
http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/
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PAUSE-ID: MERLYN [cpan.org].
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Journal of merlyn (47)

Saturday November 01, 2003
07:53 PM

flame fodder ponderings

[ #15514 ]
I wonder if people who are pro-life, claiming that a baby is a human-being somewhere before birth, probably when the heart starts beating, measure their own legal age counting from birth like the rest of us?

And I wonder if when they fill out a US Census report, they count in-womb "babies" as well? And do they deduct them on their tax records?

I mean, you can't have it both ways. It's either a person even before birth, or it isn't.

And in response to those "It's a child not a choice!" bumper stickers, I want to make up some that say "It's a fetus, not a fatality!"

Discuss.


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  • It's also fun to take the "It may be wrong, but it's not something government should legislate" platform. Many of the people who are pro-life are also against government interference in private life of citizens...
    --

    --
    "Cake or Death!" .... "Cake please"
    • Many of the people who are pro-life are also against government interference in private life of citizens...
      And for war, and for the death penalty.

      On the other hand, I'm not a hard-liner in either direction. I get to pick and choose my ethical dilemmas, waffling as necessary to appease the most proximate parties. {grin}

      --
      • Randal L. Schwartz
      • Stonehenge

  • I wonder if people who are pro-life, claiming that a baby is a human-being somewhere before birth, probably when the heart starts beating, measure their own legal age counting from birth like the rest of us?

    I've never thought of that before... Then again we celebrate and our age from our birthday not our date of conception as that is not as to calculate. And I really don't like to think about my parents having sex!

    And I wonder if when they fill out a US Census report, they count in-womb "babies" as w

  • Simple question: when does life begin?

    I find that most pro-choicers can't, or won't, answer this question. I asked this in on a newsgroup once and got everything ranging from the bizarre, to the hostile to the esoteric non-sequitur. A few more rational folks drew the line at brain activity.

    I measure my age from birth because it's convenient to do so, tradition, and because calculating age from conception date is too difficult, mainly because most people aren't exactly sure when they conceived their ch

      • > This question is not relevant.

        Typical non-sequitur from the rabidly pro-choice crowd.

        >What difference does it make if a baby is killed before or after birth?

        You gotta be fucking kidding me. So, all murder is just "post-natal abortion" then? I find your utter indifference to the value of human life (post natal or otherwise) downright scary.

  • Make Better Choices (Score:3, Informative)

    by cwest (1514) on 2003.11.01 21:27 (#25370) Homepage Journal
    While I think I'm pro-life, I also know there are too many "well, that might be okay" situations for me to really make that stance. I also think it's something that shouldn't be legislated.

    However, speaking as someone who has wanted a child only to have it die in the womb, I know my baby was a life. I think most of us who have suffered that sort of grief wish folks who decide to abort would've made better decisions to start, except where all those "well, that might be okay" situations come in, of course.

    So in the end, if you don't want to have that kid, you won't consider it a life. I don't think anyone is going to convince you that you created something that lives, it would be too hard to think of abortion as murder.

    This is starting to sound like a typical pro-life guilt trip, and I don't want to do that. Being that I've had a bad experience with a fetus that died, the subject is a bit close to my heart.
    --
    Casey West

    • I've volunteered to help patients cross the freaky fundy lines of pro-lifers who like to dress up as death and show girls photos of ghastly things to scare them from following through with their decision. Yes, people can and people do manage to scare the hell out of the younger girls who aren't prepared to deal with some guy dressed as death holding a picture of a dead and bleeding full-term baby who screams in their face that they are a murderer. It's a pity that noone pickets the pharmaceutical research

      • Agreed on all counts. There are just too many situations where abortion has to be an option to stand firm in a pro-life position. Or that's how I feel about it.

        --
        Casey West

        • Well, but take my point about the 'they must not think it's a life...' bit. There are also an awful lot of women who are married and have a few kids already who get a safe and legal abortion these days. Their reasons and their way of coping are all very different and, no doubt, many of them do think it's a life, but there are many other things they consider in the decision. A government which executes prisoners yet opposes abortion doesn't make a lot of sense in the whole 'sanctity of life' bit.

          • I can accept your point here, especially when considering that everyone copes differently. I am very close to a woman who had a few children and then had one aborted. She's regretted it ever since, and had two more children. The choice wasn't a good one for her.

            Along the lines of not having abortion legislated, this type of decision is too difficult, I think, for the black and white of law.
            --
            Casey West
      • Whether or not she regarded that fetus as a life is completely irrelevant, she was 10.

        Does that make the life in the womb any less valuable? It boggles my mind that we think our circumstances dictate the value of someone else's life.

        I am not saying abortion is never OK. But it should be treated as a life, because, well, it is. Is it biologically an individual, human life: that is, a unique living organism of species homo sapiens? Of course, no question there. The question is when it is "human", and
  • I support our Constitutionally holy guaranteed rights to bear fetuses of mass destruction!!

    • I always love it when guys talk about bearing children because if guys had to deal with the affliction for 9 months, not only would birth control be advanced and safe, it'd be in the water supply. :) As it is, we still have 1960s class pills but guys get viagra.

      Dubya will get a second term next year and the first thing he'll do once he's sworn in is begin the assault on Roe v. Wade. The religious agenda will be in term two since he had to play it safe in term one. If he gets a supreme before now and then

      • To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children." -- why is peridural anesthesia still legal, by the way?
        • Probably because the only thing crazier than nutty dictator with nukes is a woman giving birth who is screaming for some relief in the 20th hour of labor. Everyone in the room wants to live so the anesthesia is given freely :)
  • I wonder if people who are pro-life, claiming that a baby is a human-being somewhere before birth, probably when the heart starts beating, measure their own legal age counting from birth like the rest of us?

    Well, we celebrate a BIRTHday, not a LIFEday. I do celebrate the day of my daughter's conception. FWIW, my wife knew within hours of conception that she had a new life inside her. She could feel it. YMMV.

    And I wonder if when they fill out a US Census report, they count in-womb "babies" as well? A

    • If you start calling pro-lifers anti-choice, expect to be called an anti-life : that's how doublespeak works. Rhetoric battles aren't won this way, and bad advocacy is worse than no advocacy at all. If you want to argue against pro-lifers, analyze their arguments and demonstrate fairly and confidently why they're built on wind. Don't get lost on sterile disputes about the exact moment of the pregnancy where a foetus becomes a baby.

      The main (only?) argument of the rabid pro-lifers is that killing early foet

      • > The main (only?) argument of the rabid pro-lifers is that killing early foetuses is evil, and that there's no excuse for it.

        You're picking up the religious right argument. Evil vs Good is certainly not the basis of my position. I think one must be able to define murder, or at the very least manslaughter, as it could be argued that abortion does not involve malice aforethought in the traditional sense. So perhaps abortion is "killing" but not "murder"? To me the difference is moot, however.

        >D

        • That's why I included words like "rabid" and "not always" in my rant above. Good advocacy, while using every rhetoric trick to prove its point, must not oversimplify the adversaries position. I got that from the old Jesuit fathers :)

          And yes, for me the very significative difference between a 2 day old and a 250 day old foetus is that the former can't survive without a womb. I'm surprised noone mentioned this yet.

          That said, if you go back in time to the centuries where half of the children used to die before

          • I have often thought about why the women are rarely mentioned in the viability of the unborn among the pro-lifers and my conjecture is that most organised religions still view women as property, a maid, and something to give birth to male children to continue the bloodline. Why would you mention something you take for granted much like air and indoor plumbing?

            It often reminds me of the old idea that male sperm contained the fetus, the 'seed', which was planted into the woman. Of course, it was also though

            • I wouldn't say "the most organised religions", I'd say "the patriarcal religions", the ones where the unique or supreme god is typically an omnipotent Father, and which appear in patriarcal societies (like the ancient Hebrews for example). There are religions that treat women like human beings. Usually their supreme god is an omnipotent Mother :) But leading to less bellicose behaviours, they tend to disappear, of course.

              An interesting side-effect of patriarcal religions is that they always consider the wom

      • Now let's just ask what's best. Medicalized abortions, or clandestine ones ?

        What's best: that armed robbery should be legal, or illegal? That question makes as much sense as yours. If abortion is the unethical taking of an innocent human life, then it should be, under most circumstances, illegal. That's only logical.

        And that's why the current form of abortion, in our current civilization, is considered ethically acceptable and harmless.

        Not in my current civilization. In the US, most people think a
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