Woman's right to choose...

[Foamy Dog]

Peanut said:

Do most of you feel that, for simplicity sake, its okay to murder a convicted murderer, via death penaulty, but not okay to kill an unborn child. . .

I'll only attempt to answer for myself on this one. I'm very much against abortion in general; this can get pretty complicated (thus the discussion "A Complicated Subject") so I'm staying neutral on specific situations (rape and so fourth) but I see good points in both sides of the argument. I have never had to face those specific situations so it would be hard for me to say how I would feel.

The death penalty is a point on which I will stay pretty neutral (we have a discussion on this by the way where I attempt to look at both sides in the introduction.) There are good arguments on both sides.

One thing that bugs me is that the courts are now so corrupt and messed up that many people who are innocent are being put in prison. Sure, as the saying goes "They're all innocent" but we are finding more and more people being set free who were truly innocent. How many more are there? Those in prison can be set free but what if we excecute innocent people? We can't take it back. I think the "system" needs to be cleaned up before we even consider the death penalty.

Sure, as I've said in the death penalty discussion, if someone took the life of someone I love, I would want to kill them myself, as most anyone would. If someone I loved was convicted of murder, I would want them to serve the rest of their life in prison rather than face the death penalty, as most anyone would.

If there are any easy answers here, I sure don't have them.

--FD

[Peanut]

FD, there are no easy answers in something that severe. But keep in mind, what YOU or I would do if a loved one is murdered, is completely based on emotion, the purpose of the gov't, in theory, is to be as neutral as possibly. To me, having someone serve the rest of their lives in prison, is a win-win situation. In case their innocent, they can be let go and if their guilty, ROT AWAY! haha

[Foamy Dog]

Good points indeed.

Here we face the arguments that the tax payers are paying to keep prisinors up. Some say that life in prison is too easy and we are paying for it; easy prison life is the exception not the rule however.

So here's an idea, another possible win - win.

Why don't we have prisons support themselves? Perhaps they can grow their own food, sell the surplus (only crops that are not in competition with local farmers) to pay for power and so forth and maybe even produce some goods to pay for upkeep. This would ease the burden on the gov't, teach the prisinors a trade or two plus, it would allow the prisinors a bit more variety in the daily routine.

I know this has been played with before and there is a big possibility of some official slipping away with the profits but I really think that if this is done on a large scale and done carefully, it could work well.

Sorry, we've gotten off the "Woman's right to choose" topic but it's a great discussion anyhow. Funny how these topics intermingle sometimes.

--FD

[Diane125]

I think it should be allowed in cases where the mother AND child WILL die if birth is allowed, and not always, but in few cases if the mother has aids and does not want that child living a cheated(shortend) life. Granted, by not letting a child whose mother has aids or hiv, be born you are still cheating the child from life. But are you saving it from the pain of always being sick, or weak for all of the child's short life?

If the mother has HIV, the baby has a very high chance of not being born with it as long as the doctors know about the HIV while she is pregnant. I'm not sure of the exact details but if the woman has the baby by c-section and the doctors give the baby AIDS medications immediately after it is born, the baby has something like a 98+% chance of not getting AIDS or HIV.

[roil]

1) a fetus is not a child. Though it may have the potential for becoming a child it is not. If we had to hold this standard to all things that have human potential we would have the rediculous standard of calling murder, a period, masturbation, bleeding, killing a cell or squashing a collection of chromosomes.

2) the right to choose an abortion is not a discussion about the life of the fetus (which is not a person anyway), it is about the freedom of an adult to script the own course of their life. In the case of health problems to a pregnant woman, we have a duty to save the life of the human involved, if that means removing a piece of tissue from her womb so be it.

3) abortion is not murder, it is refusing the connection to the fetus in order to better serve the woman. Her rights take precident, it is her body being used by the tissue for nurishment, not the other way around.

[Horace]

I am inclined to agree.

A large number of posts appear to refer to foetuses (or even zygotes) as "a child" or "a baby". This is plainly wrong.

A collection of as few as two cells (or perhaps even one cell?) does not really strike me as being a baby. Certainly it has the potential to grow into a baby. The question is: when it should be viewed as so developed as to acquire rights of its own which are separate from those of its mother.

As a previous poster pointed out, a definition of "baby" of the type suggested by some posters would result in all sorts of problems. If anything that had the potential to become a baby was sacred we would all be obligated to have sex all day long in order not to waste potential babies. Whilst this has obvious attractions it would probably not benefit society in the long run.

[Mo]

The word fetus MEANS un-born child. And a fetus is never one or two cells.

Your premise of having sex all day so as not to prevent a potential baby is clearly absurd. I don't know you, but I'm sure you can understand that a cell, a sperm, or an egg is quite different from an un-born child. Even if you would like to believe they are no different, on some level you know better.

www.lifesite.net/clcabor...0weeks.jpg

[Mo]

www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages/archive1.htm

[Horace]

Technically you are correct in saying that a foetus is never one or two cells because at that stage it is called a zygote. It is not usually referred to as a foetus until after eight weeks.

But I take it from what you say that you would have no trouble with abortion at the two cell stage?

What about four cells?

How about eight?

Just exactly where do you draw the line?

Or are you saying that at the two cell stage it is an unborn baby?

[roil]

1) a fetus is not a baby, it is a cell collection with the potential to be a baby. It is permanently attached to the woman's unterine wall. It is no more a person than her liver is. If a woman chooses to remove her liver she has that right.

2) here are some pictures of other body parts for mo

[Mo]

I am NOT a senior citizen! At this point, I am a blob of cells with the potential to become a senior citizen!

That does not mean I am not life.
That does not mean I am not HUMAN life.

A fetus is not permanently attached to the woman. Without a violent operation, she will give birth to a child.

[Horace]

The senior citizen argument doesn't answer the question.

The question is: is it a baby when it is just two cells?

If not, when does it become a baby?

[roil]

a senior citizen is a human just as a baby-boomer is a human. What is in dispute here is not whether age makes someone human or not, but when they cease to have the potential for human life and when they become human life. The difference between a fish fetus and a human fetus at 2 weeks is almost negligable. Is this to say that a fish fetus is just as important as a human (not human fetus)?

I think not

[Peanut]

- ROIL, YOU HAVE SUCH POTENTIAL! Anywho, lets look over some blunders i found in your arguements. Mo or someone brought up the point, that the fetus (disgusting term, i believe used by secular society to cover the fact that's an underformed human life - aborting a fetus sounds a lot easier to swallow then killing an unborn child, dont you think?) is potenital human life. You then said, with this analogy, we could conclude, that a woman who has her period, has technically murdered and so has a man who has masturbated. But this is a ridiculous, an egg cannot become a zygote and then a fetus and then life, on it's own, once it passes thru the menstral cycle, that's it, that's only a cell, a sperm ejected thru mastorbatory emmisions, is the exact same thing, the sperm was not murdered, because it was not "potential for life" its a cell. Now your prolly gonna say "but when one sperm and one egg meet and make the first cell before it divides - that's just a cell" but i will "HA!" this is true, however, that cell will divide, and continue to, until it is a human being. If take a skin cell, place it in a womb, it wouldn't miraculously become life, these cells(fetal) are programed to divide, why? Who knows, i'm not a bio major, but it's has that thriving force, found in born or unborn children, LIVING THINGS WANT TO LIVE. Another thing you said, was that abortion is about the right a human being has over the say of her own body, not the dependance the other life has over her. In a way i can respect that, but that child needs its mother, to live. This is a special circumstance, would you take life support off someone who had a 90% chance of recovery, dont think so? I forget who said this, but i simply love this quote, AND it was said by a woman author: "Abortion has nothing to do with the rights of women, but the wrongs it plagues on humanity" Makes me all tingly inside, reading that one over and over.

[Mo]

You're right Peanut, "fetus" is a euphemism.
And a newborn is dependent on others to live, and so is a two year old.

www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30586